


The Causes Remain

by Taselby



Series: Cause & Consequence [1]
Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-29
Updated: 2010-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-06 19:32:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 28,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taselby/pseuds/Taselby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just as Methos and Macleod are putting the pieces of their friendship back together, a strange Immortal arrives with a challenge and revelations about Methos' past. Who is Seireadan, and how will his information affect them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Thanks to my Beloved Betas(tm): Juanita, Beth, Merry, Rene, Tuckerlair, Rienna and Methosgrrl. All mistakes are, of course, my own. Mea culpa.  


Notes on language: This story contains several words and phrases in Irish Gaelic. Due to the limits of my own knowledge and resources, I have necessarily used modern Irish throughout, even when Old Irish would be appropriate. I have also simplified usage for the sake of clarity, and not used the vocative forms of address in personal names. For the Irish-impaired among us, pronunciation of names may be roughly approximated as: Seireadan (Sheridan), Ceallach (Kelley), Gráinne (Grawn-ya), and Meara (Mara).

 

  


 

* * *

_"Stant belli causa."  
\--Virgil_

The causes of war remain.

 

* * *

"No, wait, you're not listening to me." Methos leaned across the small table, speaking loudly to be heard over the music.

Mac smiled. "I'm listening, you just aren't making any sense."

Methos squinted. "I'm serious. If you want to really understand why Rome fell, go read Ausonius."

MacLeod was skeptical. "Ausonius? The poet?" Bass guitar and drums throbbed heavily in the background. Where did Joe find some of these bands?

"Yes, the poet. The very bad poet." Methos stopped to sip from his beer and made a frustrated motion with one hand. "The man sat around writing greeting-card verses and plagiarizing Virgil while the borders of the Empire crumbled like rotten cheese. And the people loved him for it." He laughed ruefully, a rare smile lighting the sharp planes of his face.

"From Virgil to Ausonius in 400 years," Methos shuddered in mock-horror. "You know, I think the barbarians had to invade, just to put an end to it."

Mac smiled at his friend's good humor, yet was clearly still digesting this. "But what about the heavy taxation, the corrupt government, the invading Goths?" Mac enjoyed these discussions, liked hearing Methos' unique views on real versus recorded history. He had missed these talks more than he realized during their estrangement. The truce between them was still a shaky one, defined more by the topics they would _not_ explore than by the familiar way they interacted. World history was safe to talk about, personal history was not.

Methos shook his head dismissively. "Yes, those are valid points, but Ausonius' popularity is the key. A window, if you will, into the mindset of a population that allowed those other things to continue. His so-called poems..."

His voice trailed off as both men fell silent and turned toward the door, a tingling pressure building behind their ears, the unmistakable sensation of another Immortal's Presence washing over them.

MacLeod sized up the man as he entered, and watched the auburn-haired stranger as the newcomer scanned the dark bar for the source of the other signatures he sensed. He was tall, richly but conservatively dressed in muted colors, and stood with a predatory stillness as his eyes flicked from table to table. Mac automatically double checked the proximity of his coat and the katana secreted there.

The stranger's gaze settled on them, and he strode across the intervening distance with fluid grace. Methos stiffened beside MacLeod as the stranger approached. Every warning bell in Mac's head went off, shrieking _danger_ as Methos and the other Immortal stared at one another. A less-than-friendly smile stretched the newcomer's lips. Mac's fingers itched for the weight of his katana.

"_Rómhánach_!" the stranger exclaimed, laughing too brightly. "By the gods, it is good to see you. I was certain that you had lost your head to an angry father or a jealous husband, by now." He paused, looking hard at Methos. "You look different, time has changed you, _mo chara_."

Mac's mind raced, translating the Gaelic even as he considered the implications of the suggested history the two men shared. //_Rómhánach_... Roman?//

MacLeod saw Methos sit up a little taller and flash a dangerous smile in return. "Time changes us all, Seireadan. You more than me, I think."

Seireadan waved a hand in negation, and sat down in an empty chair to join them. "The moon changes her aspect, but her essence is the same. You, Rómhánach, are like a river. The course is the same, but fresh waters are ever-flowing."

"Let's dispense with the cheap metaphors, Seireadan. Are you just lonesome for my company, or is there something you wanted?" Methos' tone was pleasantly conversational, but Mac could read the the tension in every line of the slender body, down to the subtle leaping of one tiny muscle where the old Immortal clenched his jaw. Mac remained silent but ready, willing to let this angry reunion play itself out.

Seireadan sighed dramatically. "Ceallach," he addressed Methos, just a hint of venom in the rich voice, "must I always remind you of your manners? Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"

"Ceallach? I'm touched that you remembered." Methos leaned back a bit, and nodded slightly. MacLeod wondered again what old game they were playing.

"Seireadan, this is Duncan MacLeod. Mac, Seireadan is an old... _acquaintance_ of mine." There was just enough stress on the the word to renew Mac's sense of alarm. He let his knuckles trail unobtrusively over the fabric of the coat beside him as he extended a hand across the table.

"Any friend of Adam's... Pleased to meet you." It was not precisely a lie.

"And you." The handshake was perfunctory, the hand cold and dry. MacLeod noticed that the man's eyes were a bright, grassy green.

Seireadan raised a coppery eyebrow and turned the depthless gaze back to Methos. "Adam, is it? Ah, Ceallach, you really have changed. You should have helped me finish what I started."

Methos shook his head. "Help _you_? Not in this lifetime, or any other. You couldn't have stopped it even if I had. Patricius was a good man, the best for the job. If it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else, someone less sympathetic to the Irish."

Seireadan flushed, his knuckles tightening on the edge of the table. "Less sympathetic?" he hissed angrily. "Because of you, Ceallach, he lived to destroy them. I find it difficult to think of less friendly actions."

"And what? You wanted to kill him, were you going to kill all of those that followed him? Did you really want another war? Would that have saved your people? How many more... how many would have died to satisfy your twisted sense of cultural purity?" Methos drained his glass and set it aside, forcing a note of calm into his voice. "You didn't look me up just to stroll down memory lane."

"No, Ceallach, _Adam_," he spat the name like it left a bitter taste in his mouth, "whatever my ...regrets, we both know the past cannot be changed." The hair at the back of Mac's head began to creep at the note in Seireadan's voice. Something else was being said below the surface of the words. "You are a hard man to find." The green eyes were bright and cold.

"I've been around."

"Yes, I've heard from time to time when you surfaced, but by the time I arrived, you were always gone." Another exaggerated sigh. "The village just wasn't the same after you left, so many little details that could have used your personal touch. I suppose I missed you; you always had the most delightful sense of humor, so entertaining. I could always count on you for something _educational_ to fill a long afternoon. I've been wanting to catch up on old times, as it were, for close to 1500 years now. And here you are."

"And here I am." Methos' voice was dangerous. "I'm done with easing your boredom, Seireadan, and any debts between us were settled long ago. I seem to recall a rather pointed discussion we had about that at the time. So what did you have in mind now? Get drunk, assault an apple tree, sacrifice a druid for old times' sake?"

Mac had only once seen that particular burning in the clear hazel eyes of his friend, and shied away from the memory of having that baleful expression turned against him. This was not the time to allow himself to be distracted by past hurts. Methos looked like a stranger now, and a deadly one. MacLeod was hard-pressed to reconcile this man who sat poised with lethal intensity with the one who had gleefully slandered Ausonius from that same chair.

Seireadan leaned forward, baring his teeth in a grim parody of a smile. "I was more in mind to finish the ...discussion we were having when that meddlesome priest interfered. You do recall?"

Methos' grin was savage. "I've forgotten nothing, Seireadan. And as I remember it, you were never that good a conversationalist."

"Oh, I think you'll find my debating has improved since we last spoke."

The Challenge was out in the open now, and hung motionless and silent in the air between the two men. There was no way around it. MacLeod found his mouth suddenly dry, his hands clammy from a rush of fear and adrenalin. He wanted to take this challenge for Methos. Every protective instinct in Mac screamed for action, to step between them and remove the threat to his friend. For once he didn't care about honor, or the Game, or playing by the rules. He just knew he did not want to risk losing Methos to this offensive man. Was this how Amanda and Joe felt every time he went off to face an opponent?

Methos rose first, coat in hand. "Then let's take this discussion outside, shall we?"

MacLeod had never seen his friend like this, not even Kronos had conjured this level of barely-leashed violence in the old Immortal. Methos was flushed and rigid, his nostrils flaring in rhythm with his deep, steady breaths. A cold, homicidal light burned in the hazel eyes, and Mac worried briefly that Methos might draw his sword and press his attack here in the bar.

Seireadan swept a long, appraising look up Methos' body, and Mac felt himself coloring at the intensity of it. Seireadan leaned back in his chair, meeting the murderous glare in Methos' eyes without flinching. And then he laughed.

"Oh, sit down, Adam," he said disgustedly. "Unlike some of us, I still keep the old ways. Surely you haven't forgotten the date?"

MacLeod scowled, not understanding. "Tonight's the first of February."

"It's Imbolc," Methos clarified, his eyes never wavering from his adversary. "Very big in druid circles. You can't hide behind your religion forever, Seireadan." Something in the old Immortal's face twisted, a faint, vicious smile lifting the corners of his mouth. "Tell me, did you ever pass the final initiation, ever become one of the priests? Too bad you let yourself be distracted from your training so easily, but I guess you must be used to failure by now. Come look me up another night, and we'll finish that chat." Methos turned on his heel and stalked out of the bar, jerking on his coat as he went.

MacLeod calmly drained his scotch and rose, slipping on his own coat. He spared one flat, hostile look for Seireadan before following Methos out the door.

 

* * *

There was no air. Methos gasped, sucking in great heaving lungfuls of the icy wind trying to calm himself as he marched down the sidewalk with long, angry strides. He swallowed hard against his rage and disappointment, the unexpected intensity of his _need_ to kill the druid. //How does the saying go? Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world... Seireadan is alive.// Methos had never considered the possibility that the druid had managed to keep his head, but on further thought, he really shouldn't be surprised. Seireadan was a survivor.

Methos pulled his coat closer around himself and continued to pound his boots against the wet sidewalk in an even rhythm. Lost in thought, he ignored the bitter wind as it pulled at him, slapping the tails of his coat against his long legs.

The warning buzz of another Immortal washed over him, too close. He turned, reaching for his sword even as he cursed his inattention, and saw MacLeod trotting up the sidewalk toward him. Methos swallowed the sour disappointment that it wasn't Seireadan changing his mind, or some other opponent, some convenient target to vent his anger on.

Still, he slowed and allowed Mac to fall into step beside him.

Methos almost smiled at the Highlander. Mac's face was so open, the questions chasing themselves across the dark eyes, the expressive brows knitted in concern.

Methos breathed deeply again as the flood of adrenalin receded, leaving a trembling weariness in its wake. He wasn't ready for Mac's questions, but didn't see any satisfactory way of avoiding them. He would not risk their fragile friendship to lies again.

The blocks flowed by under their feet. Methos spoke first, lips thick and numb with cold. "What do you want to know?" It was easier this way, to volunteer these painful shreds of his past instead of having them torn from him unwilling, and then twisted back on him, delivered like the Gorgon's head, turned to destroy.

The eerie silence lingered for another half block, until Methos was nearly jumping in his skin, ready to confess to anything just to fill up the quiet. That thought made him angry again. Who was Duncan MacLeod to do this to him? Who did this ignorant Highland barbarian think he was to stand there and condemn Methos, _Methos_, with his silence?

"How long were you in Rome?" Mac asked quietly.

Methos could have wept with relief as the rage flowed out of him yet again. He could see it in every line of Mac's posture, the questions he wouldn't ask, the advantage Methos had given him that Mac wouldn't press. He closed his eyes to the stinging, frozen wind and relaxed, letting the memories swell up and take him. His face softened wistfully.

"Have you ever had a place where you felt safe, like you were home? Rome was like that for me... I _belonged_ there..." He scrubbed a hand across his face and stretched his lips in a self-mocking smile. "I should have known better..."

 

* * *

_Rhine Garrison of the Roman Army, 406 AD_

_Methos had spent too much time in Rome. The bustling anonymity of the metropolitan crowds had been a refuge to him in those nervous days after his departure from Kronos and the others, and as the years passed, he found himself returning again and again to the familiar, comforting structure of Roman life. The Legions in particular had become a home to him. Methos returned there every century or so to remind himself of what he had left behind in those sun-blasted deserts, and more importantly, to remember why he had left it._

_The Legions and the Horsemen were almost frighteningly similar, like two sides of the same coin. There was in both a sense of discipline and loyalty, the heady abandon of battle, and absolute devotion to the group. There was brotherhood, but this time it was without Kronos' manipulations to taint it._

_And so he had found himself there again, submerging himself in the strict discipline of military life. In the last bitterly cold days of the year that would come to be counted as 406 AD, Methos was stationed to a border outpost on the west bank of the Rhine, wet and freezing, keeping a bored, contemptuous watch on the barbarian hordes that seethed on the opposite bank of the river. He didn't know the names of all the different tribes that paced the far side, the filthy fur-wrapped savages that hooted and howled, snorting and brandishing crude weapons at the clean-cut Romans. Like the rest of his brother soldiers, Methos was enveloped in an insulating cocoon of smug superiority. He had lived long enough to realize that Rome might not be eternal, but an empire that had survived over 1100 years, that had stood longer than the Horsemen had ridden, was more than sufficient to endure the gibbering insults of some smelly Goths that were kept firmly in place by the surging river._

_It was still dark when he was wakened by the sound of activity in the camp. Men were shouting, too many voices to distinguish what the commotion was about. Methos rolled out of his blankets and pulled on his boots, wrapping a heavy cloak about his shoulders to ward off the bitter cold. Outside the scene became no clearer to him. Sentry fires cast a dim light on the milling soldiers as they ran about with a shocking lack of order and discipline. Methos walked through the camp, dreamlike, looking for an officer, or for anyone who looked like they knew what was happening. The sky across the river began to lighten to the faint silvery color of pre-dawn. Something gleamed dully in the pale light._

_The river... Feeling flowed away from his limbs in numbing shock. Methos spun and ran for his tent with sudden wrenching fear, desperate to get his breastplate and sword._

_The river Rhine had frozen solid._

_It was as though the world had held its breath waiting for him to realize the significance of the frozen river, as if this drama were being played out for his benefit alone. Even as he ran for his tent, he heard the thunderous roar of the attacking barbarian tribes as they raced across the ice, too numerous to be counted._

_Methos never reached his sword. The dangerous, slippery ground and the confusion of milling soldiers all screaming and struggling to mount a defense combined, slowing him so that he was caught in the first wave of the attack. Light exploded in his eyes as a crushing blow to the back of his head forced him down to his knees. He caught a glimpse of thick, leather-wrapped legs as another impact shattered his skull. The mud and filthy snow swept up to meet him as he felt his life slipping away._

_He awoke later with a painful, shuddering breath to find himself trampled, half-sunk in the snow and frozen mud. He had no way of determining how long he had been down. The river had thawed, burbling with exaggerated cheer in the background, and some of the bodies had begun to putrefy, filling the air with their stench. Methos scowled in disgust. Even dead, the barbarians stank. It was dark out, and the sentry fires were extinguished, never to be lighted again. The plain was heaped with bodies. Methos had never seen so many dead in one place before, not even in the worst days of the Horsemen. His ten thousand were nothing in the face of this slaughter, this absolute destruction of life. Everything was gone. The outpost had been razed to the ground, and the stoic, handsome, disciplined Legions he had thought of as brothers were slaughtered to a man._

_He would shed no tears for them. Methos scraped the icy mud from his aching limbs the best he could, gathered what few supplies he could salvage from the disaster, including a short sword the Goths had overlooked, and looked one last time at the ruin of his home. All that remained were scraps of fabric, broken bits of pottery, and the thousands upon thousands of mangled, half-frozen bodies heaped everywhere, as far as he could see._

_Rome was dead to him now, and would be to the world soon enough when that angry sea of barbarian warriors reached the peninsula. He was so tired... Very well, he sighed, straightening his shoulders resolutely, pulling the wet, filthy cloak closer about his shoulders. If the uneducated, unwashed barbarian hordes would take over the world, then he would become one of them._

_Homeless again, Methos turned his steps north, into the frozen wind._

 

* * *

The wind pulled at his eyes, made them sting treacherously. Duncan's silent, patient presence beside him was less than comforting tonight. The solid, unshakable reserves of Duncan MacLeod, that Methos had once thought he could lean on, shelter in... had since become a slippery jumble of boulders, precariously balanced and waiting to fall. One wrong move, one incautious word could destroy them both.

Methos swallowed once, trying to moisten his dry mouth, and spoke carefully. "I was in and out of Rome for centuries after I left Kronos. Romans were a decadent, lazy, self-important people. History has never yet managed to capture the sheer depth of their selfishness and cruelty, the horror of their _amusements_. I was..." he paused for a breath, looking down at the wet sidewalk. "The Legions were a good place for me then." Methos looked up, the hazel eyes shadowed with old memories, and chanced a glance at MacLeod.

Mac's face was filled with conflicting emotions, and Methos tried to wait until they sorted themselves out, all the while promising silently, //No more lies, Mac... no more lies.// His shoulders and back ached with tension as he held himself tight, waiting for the other man's response. How many times would they have to play this scene? Methos now had still one more reason to relieve Seireadan of his head, simply for heaping yet another strain on his delicately-repaired relationship with MacLeod.

Duncan shook his head minutely, shivering off some unvoiced thought or feeling, and laid a warm hand on his friend's shoulder. "Come on, let's go..." he hesitated briefly on the word, "let's go home."

 

* * *

_Methos knew this place. He had been here before, this tiny green bowl of a valley, nestled in between low hills. This scene was wrong, though. The colors were too bright, the sounds ringing in his ears hollowly. The grass was impossibly green, shimmering in a hundred brilliantly surreal shades as the wind teased and parted it, making it tickle at his bare calves as he walked. The bright, yellow sunlight was warm on his back._

_A soft laugh made Methos look to the side, and she was there, tall and black-haired the way he remembered her, her tunic belted like a man's as she waded beside him, barefoot in the tall grass. An uncommon smile lighted her strong features. "Gráinne?" he asked, confused._

_"You think too much, Ceallach," she chided him as she often did, pressing herself into his body, grabbing a handful of his long hair to guide him into a savage kiss. Methos yielded to it, as he had on a hundred golden days like this one, drawing her down beside him in the deep grass. She smelled of leather and oil, like a warrior._

_She roughly shoved him over onto his back, lifting his tunic without preamble to stroke him to hardness. The perfect blue dome of the sky spun above him as his breath quickened, only to be shut out by her shadow as she straddled him indelicately, guiding his erection into her. //Yes....//_

_They were rolling, and the world seemed to spin dizzily with them as Methos pinned her, holding her strong, scarred arms down, imprisoning the narrow wrists against the damp earth. He pounded his hips against her, grinding himself deeper into her slick heat. A voice cried out, but he didn't know whose, couldn't tell if the shout was of pleasure or pain, and it didn't matter... Nothing mattered but the writhing form beneath him, the welcoming loins he drove into, the red sunlight splashing on her face. Methos bent to kiss her..._

_...and tasted blood. He cradled her against him, his arms shaking, whispering her name, "Gráinne," over and over like a charm that would make her whole again. The grass under his knees was trampled flat, pounded into the dark mud, soaked in the blood of the warriors around him. The scent of it was overwhelming, the sweet grass and rich earth mingled with the sharp metallic tang of blood and the stench of torn bowels. It was the smell of death. The field was filled with the shrieks and moans of dying men._

_This, too, was wrong. The colors too clear, too bright, the scents and sounds too immediate to his senses. Was this the way it had happened? Was this the truth of it? It no longer mattered as he looked down into her face again, still keening her name. Despair swelled up and threatened to engulf him. This was wrong... It hadn't been like this, had it?_

_Her strong face was a mask of blood and woad, the whites of her eyes shining, starkly brilliant, like stars. Methos pressed a hand to her side in a futile effort to staunch the wound there, willing her to breathe, to heal... to live._

_"Ceallach," she wheezed, touching his face with a cold, filthy hand. "Tiarna..." she smiled weakly at the joke, her teeth stained red as blood filled her mouth. She had only called him tiarna, lord, before when she was angry. Gráinne's limp form spasmed in his arms, coughing, struggling for breath as a red froth pulsed at her sensual lips. She whispered again, the secret name she had coaxed from him against his better judgment, twisting it to her language._

_"Miotas..." And the light in her eyes was gone._

 

* * *

Methos woke to the sound of his own screams.

Something held him in the darkness, and he fought against it, thinking only that the neighboring tribe had returned, that the battle was rejoined. His sword, where was his sword? He kicked and screamed, shrieking curses at his enemy...

Until he registered the panicked voice calling his name, and the softness of the mattress against his back.

"Methos!" Duncan shouted, "Methos, wake up!" The dark shadow of MacLeod's torso loomed above him; the large hands shook his shoulders.

"Mac?" Methos asked, disoriented. "Is that you?"

"Yes," there was an amused chuckle in the darkness, "who else would I be?" The weight pressing into his shoulders eased with a soft creaking of springs and yellow light flared as Mac switched on the bedside lamp. Methos squinted blearily up into the concerned eyes of his friend.

Mac smiled gently. "You had a nightmare." There was a long pause filled with the soft ticking of clocks. Methos' heart hammered in his ears. "Want to talk about it?"

"Not right now." Methos tried very hard to remember how to breathe as the crushing intensity of the dream choked the air from his lungs. A flood of memory, the sounds of screams and the sharp scents of blood and grass, rolled over him like a tidal wave, threatening to sweep him away... away from his tentative hold on the relative security of the present and back into the nightmare. Methos tightened his grip on the soft blanket covering him, trying to ground his senses firmly in the immediate sensations of this quiet moment.

"Duncan, what time is it?" Methos desperately hoped the trembling he felt inside wasn't audible in his voice.

"Not quite 3 a.m." Mac's concern was too obvious in his dark eyes. Methos pulled himself away from the memory of other dark eyes that searched his face... blood bubbling on the soft lips...

Mac misinterpreted the other man's silence. "You dozed off while I was cooking, remember? I tossed a couple of quilts over you and let you sleep, you looked like you could use it," he explained, filling up the quiet.

Methos nodded, wiping a hand across his eyes to banish the last of his dream. "You can save the recap, Mac. I remember." He tried to smile gamely. "Well, at least you didn't kick me out on the floor. I hate waking up with a foot in my rump. Is there any food left?" He slid out of the blankets and rolled away from Mac's reassuring presence, his comforting warmth. Methos sighed at the sight of Duncan perched protectively on the edge of the bed. Leave it to the Clan Chieftain to try to parent a man thirteen times his age. But Methos was glad of the company tonight.

 

* * *

Duncan watched Methos pad silently toward the bathroom, still concerned about the dream that left the older Immortal screaming in his sleep. He rose from the bed and adjusted the sweatpants riding low on his hips. He knew Methos well enough to understand that the Old Man would talk when he was ready, and not before. Duncan could only resolve to be a willing ear when the time came.

In the kitchen he pulled bowls and pans out of the refrigerator, and set about rewarming the remains of dinner. After a moment's thought, he put a pot of coffee on to brew. Something told him that neither of them would get much more sleep tonight.

Later, after the food was gone and a second pot of coffee brewed, Duncan took down a bottle and laced the steaming mugs with liberal amounts of scotch. They were deep into their second cups of liquored coffee when the companionable silence began to stretch too thin, tension building in the uneasy quiet.

Duncan watched Methos from over the rim of his cup. The old Immortal stared blankly into the dark coffee, almost visibly withdrawing. Mac could sense him pulling away, retreating into the shadowed core of his memories. It happened to all of them. There were so many vivid moments frozen forever in an Immortal's mind, so many recollections from the long lives. And so few of the memories were happy ones.

A slight tightening at the corner of Methos' eyes told Mac of old pains. He spoke, breaking the moment with the first thing that came to mind before the other man could completely lose himself. "I didn't know you spoke Gaelic."

"What?" Methos blinked at him, confused. He looked as if MacLeod had suddenly offered him bowling lessons or free glamour portraits.

Mac took another swallow of his coffee, savoring the slow burn of the whisky at the back of his throat. He firmly stifled a chuckle at the look of absolute bewilderment on Methos' face. "Gaelic," he repeated, clarifying. "You were shouting in Gaelic. I never knew you spoke it, is all."

"Oh." The hazel eyes cleared a bit as Methos understood. "I speak a lot of languages, Mac. It was a long time ago."

Methos hesitated, letting the words drift into the silent kitchen. Mac had the odd thought that the other man was waiting for permission to continue. Methos gripped his coffee mug with both hands, and looked at Duncan for a long steady moment before taking another swallow. Mac wondered what sort of test he had just been subjected to, and whether he had passed.

Methos drained his coffee with a casual toss of his head, and reached for the scotch bottle, pouring a generous splash into the green ceramic cup. His voice was detached, clinical, as though he were reading someone else's record of events in an old book. Mac winced inwardly at the tone, and the obvious pain it was supposed to conceal.

"After the..." Methos stopped and sipped from his cup. "After Rome was gone, I made my way to Ireland. The world had been given to the barbarians, and the Irish were the worst of the lot. I'd known men recently come from Britain and Wales who literally peed themselves at the mere mention of Irish raiders."

 

* * *

Methos knew what Mac was doing, and he silently cursed the Highlander for the effort. The overwhelming flood of memories receded, bottled in by the structure of talk... by Mac's silent insistence on hearing the tale. Mac was trying to gentle the memory by coaxing Methos into sharing it. Methos did not want to remember it at all.

Methos sipped at the fiery, smoky scotch in his cup, and struggled with how much to reveal. Mac made a good show of tolerance and acceptance, but how much was he really prepared to hear? The Horsemen had been the longest, most consistently violent episode from Methos' past, but it was by no means the full extent of his shames. At least his time with Kronos had been largely unburdened by the niceties of conscience. The full realization of what he had been, the things he had done, had come later. The smaller crimes of later days took on an exaggerated significance when weighted down by-- he struggled with the word-- _regret_. He closed his eyes to block out the sudden vivid image of a rainy afternoon, his feet sinking in the cold mud, blood running freely over his chest and arms. Somewhere in the distant past a crowd was shouting, and he was screaming...

"Is that when you met Seireadan?" A softly accented voice pulled him back to the present, to the mundanities of kitchens and coffee cups and dirty dishes in the sink.

Methos stood with a sudden, restless motion and began to pace along the counter. "Do we have to talk about this now, MacLeod?"

"We don't have to talk about it at all. We can just wait until he comes for your head and see if we can all sit down for tea and get acquainted then, before he kills you!"

"Oh, yeah. Thanks for the vote of confidence there," Methos spat back.

Mac rose carefully and began clearing the last of the late supper from the table with an offensively bright clinking of plates and forks. He piled the dishes in the sink with a clatter. "Methos... don't do this. Let me help you this time. If you'll tell me..."

The absolute gentleness of Mac's tone, his relentless insistence, went over Methos like nails on a chalkboard and the tenuous grip on his temper slipped. "Tell you what? You're just not going to let this go are you?" Methos interrupted him with a shout, the anger and frustration spilling over into his voice. He could feel the fragile bonds of friendship between them crumbling under the strain, and perversely, it only served to push his anger higher. "There is nothing I can say to you that will change _anything_ about what happened. Don't you understand that yet, MacLeod? Nothing changes anything."

Mac's voice began to raise. "Well it might help if you'd ever talk to me!"

Methos fixed him with a flat, belligerent stare and folded his arms defiantly. "Fine. What exactly would you like to hear?"

"Methos..." Mac shifted uncomfortably, a note of warning in his voice.

"No, you started this. What do you want to know? What painful, humiliating piece of my past would you like me to trot out and display for your amusement? You already know about Kronos, so how about something else for your entertainment tonight. How about when I was a prostitute? No?" Methos looked around with sharp, jerking motions, pretending to consider his choices. "All right. What about the time I was a paid assassin? No, not that." He stalked the length of the counter, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. "Let me think..."

The smoldering anger, the resentment in Methos' eyes was completely out of sync with the dark cheer of his voice. "I know. Let's talk about when I was a _slave_."

Mac winced at the words, reaching out a hand in what was surely meant as a comforting gesture. "Methos..."

"No!" Methos shouted at him, slapping the hand away, "I don't want your fucking sympathy, and I don't need you to be my keeper. What? Do you think I sat around for 5000 years waiting for the great Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod to come and... and pat my head and tell me it was going to be all right?"

"Damn it, Methos, I'm not trying to 'pat your head.' I just want to help you, and I can't do that if you won't let me." Mac's volume crept steadily upward, keeping pace with the other man's.

"Help?" Methos barked the word in a parody of a laugh; his sarcasm was a tangible thing in the air. "You want to help me? Like you helped me when that Jakob Galati business went down with the Watchers? Very helpful, there the way you got Joe out of town for a while so things could cool off. And, hey, I gotta say, that was very supportive, the way you stood by me when I was trying to keep the two of you alive. 'One of them or one of us.' What a pep-talk. You have a real gift for saying just the right thing, Mac." Methos continued to pace restlessly, his motions tightly controlled. His hands shook as he gestured angrily.

"Oh, and um, _thanks_ ever so much for helping me resolve that little problem with Byron. You're a real pal." The pacing turned and carried him across the room to where Mac stood silently against the bar, voiceless at this unexpected outburst.

"And let's not forget our old friend Kronos." A tiny voice in Methos' head was telling him to shut up, that he was pushing too far, but he resolutely ignored it, the momentum of the argument had built too quickly to stop now. And it felt good to finally tell Mac how these things had hurt. "You were so willing to believe the worst Cassandra could say about me, so ready to think that I had played you for a fool all this time... Where were you when I needed you _then_?" His voice broke on the last word, his throat thick with stifled despair.

"It might be easier if you would ever tell me anything! Your answer to a problem is to what... do nothing? You want to ignore it and just hope it goes away?" Mac took a step toward Methos, bristling with frustrated anger. "I can't do that, Methos, I can't just stick my head in the sand and hope to God that things manage to work themselves out. That's what you do-- you run from your life, you run from your problems. You head off to Tibet, or to wherever you were going to hide when I found you loading up your truck after Kronos showed up." Mac paused for a breath, his eyes hard. He spoke very quietly. "And what Cassandra said was true."

"Yes, but you didn't have to be so God-damned quick to believe her." Old sorrows swelled up inside him, and mingled with the new ones until Methos thought his eyes might betray him, like everything else, and start to cry. "You can stop trying to play the Clan Chieftain for me MacLeod. I don't need it, and I don't want it." He swallowed another breath and spoke with as much force as he could manage.

"You cannot fight my battles for me!"

"Well you certainly don't seem to be fighting them for yourself!" Mac shouted at him, too close, pressing Methos back toward the counter.

Methos' reaction was as instantaneous as it was regrettable. His arm swung up, and he watched with an odd detachment as Mac's head snapped back from the blow, carrying the rest of the Highlander backward, and over an inconveniently-placed chair. Mac was on the floor before Methos had even felt the force of the punch in his own hand.

Methos couldn't feel his body, and was only dimly aware of the sound of his own voice, shouting as if from a great distance. "Get up! You want to see me fight? Get the hell up off the floor and I'll _give_ you a fight. Well? What are you laying there for, you started this. GET UP!"

Duncan was motionless, frozen with shock. One hand cradled his jaw where the blow had connected, and he slowly shook his head in negation. "No," he mumbled through closed teeth. "I don't want to fight you, Methos." His words were slurred, barely audible. Mac squinted in pain as he probed with careful fingers, assessing the damage to his face. "I won't fight you." Blood bubbled on the full lips as Mac remained on the floor, watching Methos with pain-clouded eyes.

Methos towered over Duncan, staring fixedly at him without really seeing, lost for an instant in the memory of other bloodstained lips. Adrenalin and rage slowly receded, pain and embarrassment rushing in to fill the void left behind. Methos felt almost as stunned as Mac looked, sprawled awkwardly on the floor. The angry flush drained from his face as he grimaced and gingerly probed at his hand, hissing as the bones shifted. The refrigerator hummed softly in the background. "I think I'd better go now," he said quietly.

"No, wait," Mac mumbled from between his teeth, cupping his jaw with one hand while trying to lever himself upright with the other. That condemning spot of blood stained his lower lip. Methos had been helpless to prevent that other tragedy, unable to mend the hurt. He hesitated over the decision for only an instant before extending his left hand to help the Highlander rise.

"Are you all right?"

"In just a minute. I think you broke my jaw." Mac righted the chair and sat carefully. Methos could see the dark bruise spreading along Duncan's face.

Methos gave a chagrined smile. "That's all right, your thick Scottish head broke my hand." He joined Duncan at the table and reached for the miraculously unspilled bottle of scotch with his left hand and poured fresh shots for them both.

The quiet stretched out again between them, less tense, but still crowded with things that needed to be said.

Methos sipped at his drink and sighed. What could cure, might also kill. He spoke in a dry, hushed tone.

"1500 years ago, I was a slave in Ireland..."

 

* * *

_Ireland, 421 AD_

_There were no more thoughts of struggle left in him. Methos was exhausted and dehydrated, his tongue thick and dry in his mouth, his eyes sticky and unfocused. In other moments, other lifetimes, he might have laughed at someone in this situation, but somehow the image of a runaway slave's "welcome home" was less amusing when viewed from the inside. They were getting better at catching him, or he was far less adept at remaining uncaught than he should be. This was his third try for freedom from the mad druid, and he had the sinking idea that Seireadan would not be so casual about his prized possession's security again._

_How long had he been tied here, naked to the elements? Certainly long enough for his fair, exposed skin to blister and peel in the punishing sun. He was a prodigious healer, all Immortals were, but there was only so much damage his body could keep up with at one time. Sunburn was very low on the list of priorities this week._

_Methos sagged against his bonds, unable to silence the dry hiss of pain as the ropes bit into his raw wrists, bringing fresh blood to the surface. He was so tired; he had been hanging here too long. If left until tomorrow, he would surely die of thirst and exposure, so that meant that Seireadan would be back at some point today. The only condition of Methos' captivity was that his owner was forbidden to kill him. Cold comfort, that._

_Seireadan had taken great delight in testing the limits of Methos' endurance, wanting to see exactly how far the half-starved Immortal's body could be pushed without succumbing to death, and how long it took him to recover._

_There were days when Methos ached for the simple comfort of a clean beheading._

_The sun was too hot. He was so thirsty he couldn't even sweat any more, and had already bitten through his cheek once to wet his parched mouth with blood. That hadn't helped him at all. It had been so long since he was given food or drink, the scant mouthful of salty blood had been quickly vomited up, and dried in a sticky crust across his chest and stomach. How many days had he been hanging here, tied to this post like an offering?_

_Methos closed his eyes against the bright afternoon, the restless way the wind played with the tall grass. He reached for the darkness inside him, trying to relax into it, to give himself to unconsciousness, or to the numbing release of death, however temporary. Thick and sluggish, his heartbeat continued to throb in his ears. Even that impermanent sanctuary was denied him. It was fitting, in a blackly humorous way, and he smiled painfully at the joke, lips splitting and trickling a thin stream of blood into his sparse beard. Even Kronos had made demands of him, had wanted things of him. Obedience, loyalty ...the use of Methos' supple body and keen mind, and once Methos had agreed, had submitted to Kronos' will, the torments had mostly stopped. Seireadan wanted nothing, made no demands, no overtures of peace. Methos was property. All Seireadan required of him was his presence and his pain. And his continued life._

_Strange, that death would be denied to the one who had been on such intimate terms with it, had brought it to so many others. There was a certain justice there, too. The horror that Methos allowed himself to become in the name of survival, to please Kronos, and then to please himself... the pain he had inflicted... perhaps his death was too small a price to ask for the weight of his crimes._

_The faint humming pressure of an approaching pre-Immortal built behind his ears, and Methos' breath quickened at the accompanying surge of adrenalin. //No more...// He tried to stand, to ease the strain on his aching arms stretched tightly above his head, but his shaking legs could no longer bear his weight. They collapsed under him, jerking his shoulders and wrists with a sharp flare of agony. His raw back scraped against the wooden post. He didn't even have the breath to cry out._

_Red-rimmed hazel eyes slid open to see Seireadan approaching with casual strides, like this was no more than an afternoon excursion, a pleasant diversion from his duties. The druid gestured sweepingly with his staff and considered the scene before speaking. The soft, dulcet tenor was improbably beautiful, too fine a voice for such a man._

_"Well, a wandering Roman dog returned to his master yet again."_

_Methos lolled his head back, exposing his throat in an intentional tease. "Have you finally come to kill me?" he croaked, his voice thick and rough, his mouth dry._

_"Ceallach," the name was an insult, an irony, naming a slave 'warrior,' "we both know the answer to that. It is forbidden. And I would miss you." Seireadan stalked around the pillar, his garment flowing. "You are such a delightful companion, Ceallach. I find that I am never lonely with you here to keep me entertained." The broad end of the walking staff lashed out to strike Methos in the chest. Dimly, from far away he heard/felt the wet _pop_ of a rib giving way, collapsing. Sparks of pain exploded in his eyes, and he whimpered through his clenched teeth. It was going to be a long day._

_"What do you do with a runaway _dog,_ Ceallach?"_

_//You beat it...//_

_The heavy, twisted stick swung out again, to the same tender place as before. Blood and bile fountained in his mouth, and he screamed with a voice he had forgotten he possessed, coughing, spitting, choking for breath._

_"What do you _do_ with a runaway _Roman_ dog?" The knobbed end of the staff crashed brutally into his side again. Another rib popped free._

_Methos shrieked and thrashed against the ropes that held him, tearing the skin on his wrists. Blood dripped steadily down his arms. It was a long, long time before he lost consciousness._

 

* * *

Mac drained his cup again, and reached for the bottle. He would have to open another one soon, this one was nearly empty. He tried not to let his discomfort show as he poured, a bit unsteadily, for them both. It was not so much the nature of Methos' admission that bothered Mac, as it was the unmistakable self-loathing in the Old Man's voice as he told the story. How could anyone hate himself so much?

"Why couldn't you have just told me before?"

Methos scrubbed a hand across his eyes and sighed tiredly. "What do you want from me, Mac? There are things in my past I'd rather not share, things I wish to gods I didn't recall. This is one of them." He accepted the drink Mac poured, tossing it back with a smooth motion, and held his cup out for more. "Do you think I sit at Joe's every time wondering what nightmare from my past is going to come traipsing through the door? I thought Seireadan was dead. I hoped he had lost his head and saved me the trouble of taking it."

"You're ashamed." Mac saw the old Immortal flinch as the words struck home. Sensing the soft spot in the wall Methos had been building all night, Mac moved in, hammering at the sudden breach. "Methos, it's not your fault that they forced you to be a slave. There is nothing shameful in it, or in anything Seireadan might have done to you. You did what you had to do, to survive." Mac reached sympathetically across the table for Methos' now-healed hand, wanting the clarity of physical contact.

Methos snatched his hand out of Mac's reach with a hiss and a jerk, retreating so quickly from the offered touch that his chair rocked back briefly on two legs. "You don't know anything _about_ it, MacLeod." The old Immortal suddenly looked every one of his 5000 years and more. Tired, Methos looked so tired, eyes red from the late hour and the prodigious amount of scotch he had consumed, the years and the memories pressing him down like a physical weight. He leaned his face into his hands and looked back up at Mac, blinking owlishly in the garishly bright kitchen light.

"What am I doing here? Getting drunk and random, playing true confession at what? 4:30 in the morning? I must be getting senile." He made as if to rise.

Mac clamped a restraining hand across the slender wrist with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. "No, don't go, don't keep pulling away like this."

Methos stared at the dark hand on his wrist like it was a poisonous animal. His voice was low and dangerous. "Let go of me."

"No." Mac met his eyes defiantly, sure now of Methos' reasons for wanting to run from this. Avoiding this would not help anything tonight, but still Methos flinched from this topic like the painful wound it surely was. If he could only make the stubborn old man see the truth of it, to understand that despite the horror of his experience, he was not to blame for it.

"No?"

"No. What, you want to break a few more bones? Fine. If you really want to we can stop pussy-footing around with bruises and fractures and go downstairs and do this properly, with swords. We can kill each other here and no one will care but the clean-up crew. But I won't let you go until we can get this over with, do you understand?"

Methos glared at him murderously for a moment, and then sat, his expression becoming flat and unreadable. Mac hated when Methos did that. talking to him then was like trying to reason with a wall.

Mac released his painfully tight grip on Methos' wrist and gathered himself for an instant before speaking. "Do you practice talking in circles? You keep telling me that I don't understand, that I'm not listening to you. Well, I'm listening to you now!" Mac's accent began to thicken, a sure sign of his weariness and distress, but he couldn't stop the elevating burr in his words even as he cursed the betraying brogue.

"So what, exactly, don't I understand? You were a slave, yes? You were Seireadan's slave, yes?" Methos' face was like a stone, giving Mac no clues about which direction to go, where to set his hammers to break this wall. He could feel Methos retreating, slipping away into his defensive shell, hiding behind the facade of the Oldest Immortal. Even gentle, cynical Adam Pierson would have been easier to deal with than Methos The Inscrutable. He continued blindly, letting the rush of his concerns set their own pace. He had to make Methos understand. "There is nothing shameful in things that you are forced to do. That's like blaming a rape victim for the violence that was done to her. _That_ much I understand."

Methos looked at him dazedly for a long moment, and MacLeod fought the urge to smile at his triumph. The wall was coming down.

Then Methos began to laugh, a dark, humorless sound. "I was right. You _don't _understand. You don't hear what I'm telling you." He stood then, leaning across the table and speaking each word with clipped, icy precision.

"Forced me? Nobody _forced_ me to do anything. There weren't enough men in the village to force me to do their will; there weren't enough slave-lords in Ireland to keep me in chains. I was _death_, Mac. Kronos couldn't keep me, you think some ignorant, woad-painted cattle ranchers _could_?"

Duncan faltered, staggered by the force of Methos' confession. The wall had been breached, but not fallen in the anticipated direction. "What? But if nobody... if Seireadan didn't force you..." The dusky face paled to a sickly greenish color as understanding, coupled with a rising horror, dawned in the dark eyes. There were layers of meaning to this revelation.

"You mean you _let_ it happen?"

"Yes. I let it happen. Are you happy now? I surrendered my sword and gave myself into slavery. Are you _happy_?" Methos made an explosive gesture and stalked across the kitchen to lean against the counter.

Duncan struggled for words as he felt the situation slipping out of his control. "Methos, I... I don't... You are right, I don't understand, not that."

"Big surprise there. 'Duncan MacLeod doesn't understand.' Call the papers, there's a headline to stop the presses." Methos visibly cut himself off, rubbing a hand through his hair.

"Gods, it's come to name-calling. I have to go, Mac, before we really say things we're going to regret." He went about the loft collecting his things.

Duncan moved, standing at the counter, watching Methos with shadowed eyes. "Methos..."

"No, don't ask me to stay any more, Mac. I need to get out of here. I've had about enough of this cozy domestic scene for one evening. Look, I'll see you around."

The sound of the back door closing hung in the air for a long moment before being swallowed by the ringing silence.

 

* * *

_Ireland, 438 AD_

_The sound of Gráinne's shrieking rang in Methos' ears, rising and falling in a steady cadence as she, yet again, gave voice to her anger. He had stopped paying attention to the content of her tirade several minutes ago, and instead concentrated on the vocabulary she employed. The range and breadth of her curses was almost poetic, lyrical in a dark way, though she certainly would have taken fresh offense at that thought. He grinned at the notion of telling her, seeing how high he could stoke her fury._

_The easy rhythm of her profanities abruptly stopped, and she whirled on him, her black eyes gleaming. "What are you laughing at?" Her deep voice was low and dangerous. Gods, she was a treasure. Methos decided to toss some fuel on her fire, and chose his words carefully._

_"Shut up, woman."_

_She exploded. "Pitiful, whining pup! You are not fit for pells, do not think to command me. Worthless, bookish manling that you are, more content to whisper with those spineless, stoneless Roman priests than to behave as a man aught... You, who cannot give me sons, you who cannot keep the stew pot from burning, you who..."_

_Methos let her continue on for a few more moments, enjoying the flush on her fair skin, the way she gestured with her lean, muscled arms, the gleam of sweat on her thighs where they showed under her short tunic. She wasn't a beautiful woman, quite the opposite, actually. Sunburned and scarred, nearly as tall as himself, her features too strong for the shape of her face, and a nose that had been broken more than once, she was every inch the hard-muscled warrior that he had first taken her for. She was temperamental, unpredictable, frequently violent, and utterly delightful to him._

_He walked across the dark, single-room _bráca_ they shared, watching the confused outrage play across her face. Methos stood close enough to feel her breath warm on his cheek, and whispered an endearment to her in Aramaic._

_The flush in her cheeks deepened, and the black eyes narrowed. This time though, he was prepared. His left arm swung up to block the punch she aimed at his face, and he grinned savagely at her surprised expression. Busy with self-congratulatory thoughts as he was, he completely missed the left hook speeding toward his jaw._

_"Do not mock me with foreign speech!"_

_His head rocked back with bone-jarring force and stars exploded in his vision. By the gods, he loved this woman! No delicate feminine struggles or dainty slaps: Gráinne hit like a man. And Methos returned the favor, sending her long-limbed shape sprawling with a well-placed strike to her cheek._

_She lay across the pallet of blankets and hides they shared, panting in anger. He watched her, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth with a thumb. "That hurt."_

_She laughed at him. "What a fierce warrior you are, Ceallach, to let a woman make you bleed." Her plain face was radiant with mischief as she swept him with a thoughtful gaze. "You make a better woman than I do. I would put you in a long tunic and teach you to spin, but your legs are too pretty."_

_Methos' breathing became ragged as she rolled to her knees and slid callused hands up his thighs in a slow tease._

_"Did you cry on your virgin night, Ceallach? Did you bleed like a maiden girl?" She stood, circling behind him, stroking his hips and buttocks roughly through the coarse cloth of his tunic. Her voice was deep and throaty in his ear, her warm breath an almost-unbearable torment._

_"Have you ever been with a warrior, Ceallach? I should have been born a man, to take you properly, to show you the real use of a sword..." Gráinne pressed her hips into him from behind, making false, teasing thrusts as she mocked him. A firm hand gripped his rising erection. "Oh, not so stoneless as those soft priests after all." Another hand tugged at the belts on his garment._

_"You are too pretty, Ceallach. You should have been a woman; you should have been _my_ woman." Her feinting thrusts against him were becoming more urgent, her breathing harsh with arousal. "Have you ever been with a warrior?" she repeated. "I bet you were a favorite in the camp... so pretty."_

_"Enough," he groaned, unable to stay still any longer. Methos pushed her down, stripping her belts and tunic from her roughly, before removing his own. Gráinne lay back on the blankets, watching him undress with dancing eyes. Methos knelt between her feet, parting her thighs with firm hands and moving up to sink himself into her familiar heat with one smooth motion._

_"Ceallach," she laughed underneath him, "can you use a sword after all?" Gráinne shifted her hips as though looking for balance, and suddenly rolled them, grinning smugly as she held his wrists to the hard dirt floor. "Tell me," she taunted, "who has been giving you lessons?" She held him with her strong thighs, grinding herself against him in her own rhythm._

_Methos waited, watching the bouncing sway of her breasts as she moved, pressing himself up to meet her driving motion. The pressure was building, but he wasn't ready to yield himself to it just yet. Patience... wait... There. Soon..._

_Gráinne's eyes glazed as her attention shifted inward, and she pounded herself down onto him with a desperate violence. Still he waited, counting the breaths... Not much longer... There. He toppled her over, back into the nest of blankets. She growled in irritation and tried to reverse the position again. Methos shoved her shoulders roughly back down onto the bed and drove himself into her. "No," he panted, "this way."_

_"Ceallach," her voice might have sounded threatening if she'd had any breath to put behind it. But it was too late for protests. With a soft cry, Methos yielded himself to the insistent pressure, the deep pleasure of her body. He moved over her more slowly now, riding the spasm, his long hair falling to either side of her face like a curtain. Leaning down along her body to kiss the full lips, he smiled, breathing heavily._

_"Gods, woman, don't you ever shut up?"_

 

* * *

"Jesus, Mac. Haven't you learned when to shut your mouth yet?" Joe admonished him even as he refilled the coffee mug Mac cradled in his hands.

"Apparently not."

"What were you thinking? I mean just what did you think you were going to accomplish?"

MacLeod twisted the coffee cup restlessly in his hands. "I don't know, Joe. I just thought... I thought if I could make him understand, if I could help him..."

"What?" Joe prompted.

"I thought I might be able to make up, just a little, for not helping him before, in Bordeaux."

"God, Mac... You two are still stuck on that Kronos thing? After all the times you and Methos have been here together, I thought..." Joe looked down into his own coffee and grimaced. "So your little attempt at playing 'kiss and make up' last night didn't turn out quite like you expected?"

"You could say that." Mac stood with nervous intensity, shifting uneasily under the Watcher's unsympathetic observation. "God, Joe, what have I done?"

"You don't seriously expect me to answer that." Joe's regard was unflinching. "Duncan MacLeod, you are a piece of work. Let me get this straight. You get the urge to play 'Mr. Fix-it' and make Methos feel better, so you interrogate and badger him like a Federal witness about something he already said he didn't want to tell you?" Joe was incredulous. "I'll give you some free advice. The next time you want to invade someone's privacy, go read their mail. If you get the urge to really hurt someone, stick a knife in them. It's simpler that way."

Mac opened his mouth as if to speak, but was silenced by the steely unforgiveness in Joe's posture.

"And do me a favor, Mac. The next time I have a problem, stay off my side."

"Now that's not fair!" Mac protested.

Joe's face flushed angrily. "Yeah, well neither is the way you're treating Adam. Sometimes, Mac," Joe paused for emphasis, "sometimes you're harder on your friends than your enemies."

There was no real response to that, and Mac watched as Joe moved down the bar to help Mike with the early afternoon lunch crowd.

 

* * *

Mac watched Joe polish glasses with firm automatic swipes of his towel, wondering if this was some special technique to ignore people that the Watcher had learned in bartender school. Maybe Methos had been giving him lessons, God knew they had apparently been trading notes on everything else. The hard part was that Mac realized that he was in the wrong here, knew that he could hardly have hurt and alienated Methos more if he had engineered their argument with that in mind.

Methos, true to form, had given Mac exactly what he had asked for, but not in the way anticipated. //And just how did you expect it to be, idiot,// Mac berated himself, //cozy midnight confessions over coffee? Did you really think that you could fix this with the trite offer of a willing ear and a shoulder to cry on? God, I am as much of a fool as he accuses me of being.// The coffee in his cup was cold, but he sipped at it anyway. //What is the matter with me? All I know lately is that I don't want to lose him over this... over any of this.//

The scant details that Methos had supplied about his years as Seireadan's slave refused to leave MacLeod alone. He turned the images over in his mind, ruthlessly reexamining them in the harsh light of Methos' stunning confession. //How could he just let that happen? What could possibly have occurred to make him accept those abuses, to permit the loss of his freedom?//

Duncan knew, on a purely intellectual level, that Methos was older and more complex, filled with more mysteries than Mac could have hoped to unravel in the brief span of their intense friendship. Every time he became certain, convinced that he had some toe-hold in understanding, some new detail would surface to shatter Mac's carefully-constructed image of the ancient Immortal.

There was Methos the Watcher, who got positively giddy over old books and fresh beer, the one who had loved Alexa. Methos the Horseman, the dark shadow behind Adam Pierson's eyes, had killed and raped without cause or consequence across two continents; he was the one who had broken Cassandra. Methos the sensualist wallowed in gross decadence with Byron. Methos the protector had Challenged Stephen Keane on MacLeod's behalf, and had killed Kristen for the same reasons. Methos the teacher was always needling him, questioning Mac's motives, his honor, his narrow views of right and wrong, coaxing him to better understanding with an anecdote, or a single well-placed word, or just a glance.

Add to this bizarre menagerie the roles Methos deliberately played, the identities he assumed, the facades he concealed himself behind, and the waters became impossibly muddied. How could MacLeod ever hope to understand this man; how had he ever dared to think he really knew him?

And now there was Methos the slave. Mac still could not accept this new addition to the collection. This Methos was angrier than the others. He hurt and hated with a startling intensity, the smoldering violence thinly restrained by the weight of his sorrow and self-loathing. Mac didn't know how to reach this new stranger that wore a familiar face, didn't know how to ease the deep wounds he sensed there. He wasn't even sure if it was his place to try.

Duncan missed the old days, before Kronos had come and shattered the easy trust Mac and Methos had shared, before the comfortable friendship was all but destroyed. Mac realized that the friend he had known was another false front, built from a handful of Methos' lies and MacLeod's own incorrect assumptions, but the companionship was sweet for all its deceptive beginnings. He missed the first Methos he had known: Methos the friend.

The distinctive tingling pressure of another Immortal's Presence swept over him in a slightly disorienting wave. Like every time, the fine hairs on Mac's neck bristled, and adrenalin flooded his body as time-honed reflexes prepared him for a confrontation. He automatically slowed and deepened his breathing in an effort to compensate as he turned toward the door, mentally composing an apology for Methos.

"Adam, I..." The words died on his lips as he got a look at the figure in the doorway. Too-broad shoulders and a soft fall of fiery auburn hair confirmed that this was not the man MacLeod expected.

"Seireadan," Mac acknowledged flatly.

"MacLeod, how nice to see you again." Seireadan sat beside him at the bar, ordering a Guinness draft from Mike, Joe apparently having found better distractions than polishing glasses that were already impeccable.

"Pity I can't say the same." Mac was in no mood to play word games with the druid.

Seireadan raised an eyebrow, but didn't take the bait. "I see you are alone today, not playing the Roman's shadow. Does he let you out often like this, or did you slip your leash?"

Mac smiled amiably, but his voice had a hard edge. "Let's quit the games, Seireadan, I'm not really that amused by them. I don't like you. I wasn't crazy about you last night, and I'm even less fond of you today. So why don't we take this outside and have done with it?"

"You really are the Roman's pet. A lapdog that thinks it's a mastiff, how droll." The green eyes glittered in the dim light as Seireadan sipped from his stout, considering. "No, Scotsman. You have exceedingly poor taste in companions, but that alone isn't enough for me to want to kill you. I've seen enough dead Celts without adding to the count. My quarrel is with Ceallach, and his treacherous head is the only one I want."

"I'm not his _pet_, I'm his friend."

Seireadan laughed with a display of even, white teeth. "Then you obviously don't know him as well as you pretend."

"I know him well enough." A sudden thought intruded on Mac. "Besides, I thought you were forbidden to kill him?"

"I see he told you part of the story. Did he tell you all of it? Did he tell you his crime, why he was given to me?"

MacLeod was silent.

Seireadan's voice was soft and melodious, still bearing the slightest trace of an accent. "So like a Roman, to deal in half-truths and lies. I'll tell you, I'll tell you all of it, and then you can decide how well you know your so-called friend...."

 

* * *

It was 4:00 when Methos walked into Joe's Bar, at once disappointed and silently grateful for the absence of other Immortals. In that respect, at least, the old saying was true: everybody did come to Joe's. The bar was dark and quiet, nearly deserted at this in-between hour. The lunch crowd had left, and the after-work patrons would not arrive for an hour or more.

Soft blues guitar wafted down from the speakers in the ceiling, slow and melancholy with a slight whisky-rough edge. Methos recognized the CD as a favorite of Joe's, but couldn't place the artist's name offhand. This was a bad idea. He shouldn't have come here, but the bar had been pulling at him like a lodestone all day with mute promises of cold beer and warm companionship. Now that he finally stood in the entryway, Methos was suddenly nervous. He shifted his weight uneasily between his feet, preparing to turn and go.

"Adam, come sit down," Joe called and waved to him from a side table. "Hey Mike, bring us a couple of beers, would you?"

Methos sighed. So much for quick exits. "Hi Joe, what's new in the world?" He did his best to project an air of casual friendliness in his best Adam Pierson mode.

"Thanks Mike." Joe accepted the pitcher of beer and two mugs, pouring for them both with easy grace. He passed a glass across the table, and fixed Methos with a steady gaze. "MacLeod was in earlier." His voice was deceptively nonchalant.

The bar suddenly seemed very cold. Methos stared hard at the glistening beads of condensation trickling down the side of the pitcher. "Oh, I see." He sat his beer down with a muted thump. "Is this the part where we make idle chit-chat? I ask after his health and general well-being, express my, um... good wishes for his future success and happiness? Or shall we just cut to the point and have me ask what he came to see you about?" The tone was bitter, angry, and far crueler than Joe deserved. Methos regretted the harsh words even as he said them. He was angry at MacLeod, and had no right to take it out on Joe.

"Oh, stop it," Joe scowled at him irritatedly. "Save the melodramatics, Adam. I'm not your enemy here, and neither is Mac."

"Sure of that, are you?" It was less than a question.

"Yes, I am." Both men sipped at their beers while they let that statement settle.

Methos broke the silence first. "So how much did he tell you?"

"Enough. Most of it, probably. Enough to know that he's worrying at it like a sore tooth, and you probably aren't doing much better." Joe scratched his beard thoughtfully. "You know, you two fight like an old married couple. If you would ever stop bickering long enough you'd realize that none of this..." he waved a hand in a sweeping gesture, "none of this really matters. Your past doesn't change who you are today."

"MacLeod doesn't see it like that. Some crimes there are no atonements for, and forgiveness is not a large part of his make-up regardless. Much as I would like to, I cannot be the person he expects me to be. My past is not so easily expunged. And to tell you the truth, Joe, I'm not sure if Mac and I will ever get beyond it. I'm not even sure I want to try anymore."

The music droned on in the background, softly irritating. Methos took a large swallow of his beer, cradling the nubby glass mug in his large hands. He glanced up at Joe, and sighed resignedly. "I can't keep doing this, Joe. I can't keep rebuilding this friendship over and over, just to see it destroyed again by the next dark figure from my past that comes strolling through the door. Trust is either there, or it isn't. Mac either accepts me, all of me, or not. He can't pick and choose what parts of me to be friends with anymore." Methos reached for the pitcher to refill his mug.

"Gods, Bora Bora is looking better all the time."

Joe's look cut straight through him. "So if hanging out with MacLeod is such grief, why do you keep coming back? Why aren't you sipping daiquiris and working on your tan?"

"You've got me there. I honestly don't know why. Maybe I will go find some desert island after this business is settled and just... well. No use making long-term plans until this _is_ settled."

"What are you going to do?" Joe asked gently.

Methos deliberately misunderstood him. "Do? I'm going to find Seireadan and I'm going to kill him. I figure he's long overdue to lose his head anyway."

"No, Adam. What are you going to do about Mac?"

Methos exhaled slowly. He should have known the Watcher wouldn't be so easy to get around. He met Joe's eyes and answered honestly. "I don't know. I just..."

"Just what?" Joe prompted.

"I don't have so many friends that I can afford to throw them away. I don't want to lose him, Joe."

"So why don't you go tell him that?" Something bright and mischievous gleamed for an instant in the Watcher's blue eyes.

"It's not that simple."

"You never know, Adam. Maybe it is."

 

* * *

Methos' feet seemed to be on autopilot today, carrying him with a mindless determination to places that he promised himself he wouldn't go. He had certainly never meant to find himself at Joe's, but the Watcher had been good to talk to. Joe's insightful, no-bullshit view of people and events, combined with two pitchers of beer, had gone far to calming Methos' sense of fatalistic dread about the Highlander.

Methos allowed one tiny spark of hope to flare, nurturing the ember of belief that he and Duncan could indeed get beyond MacLeod's rigid inability to accept the horrors of Methos' past for what they were... _past_. And if they couldn't put this behind them for friendship's sake, well, it wouldn't be for lack of trying.

Seireadan's neck would still be there tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever Methos got around to it. Besides, odious as he was, the druid was an aside, a distracting annoyance. An annoyance with a sword and a chip on his shoulder, but still a sidebar to Methos' main concern of repairing his friendship with Mac.

Clouds were a dark purple bruise on the horizon, promising more freezing rain tonight or tomorrow. The dojo loomed across the street, tall and foreboding in the wan afternoon twilight. Methos recounted his numerous and convincing reasons for not wanting to be here even as his feet carried him unheeding across the litter-strewn asphalt.

He was halfway up the lift, still reciting all the very valid arguments for him not to be doing this when he felt the surging pressure in his ears that indicated MacLeod was home. Methos breathed deep, collecting himself, searching for the strength to do this still one more time.

//Sometimes the only way out is through.//

Mac was standing at the kitchen island, quietly imposing in a conservative sweater and the deft, easy way he wielded a long knife against a board full of vegetables. He barely glanced up at Methos' entrance, like the old Immortal had been expected and planned for.

"Hi," Mac greeted him in a warm voice, "have you eaten?"

Methos shook his head mutely, his mouth suddenly dry. He had anticipated many receptions here tonight, but dinner wasn't one of them. He covered his confusion in the automatic motions of hanging his coat by the door and adjusting the sudden tightness of his collar.

"There's a beer in the fridge, or I've got an open bottle of wine on the counter, if you like red Zin. Dinner will be a few minutes." Mac's tone was pleasantly hospitable. Methos had to blink and double-check both his location and the identity of the man briskly dicing vegetables in the kitchen. His head swam at the crazy surreal quality of the scene. This felt like nothing so much as an episode of the "Twilight Zone."

Numbly confused, and more nervous than ever, Methos drifted across the floor toward the refrigerator and the promised beer therein.

Three silent beers later, Duncan served steaming bowls of a sweet, spicy beef stir-fry and rice, and led Methos over to the couch to sit and eat. The old Immortal's paranoia was in high gear, and he barely tasted the food as he ate with automatic motions. Something was wrong, very wrong. Mac never... well, rarely ever, invited Methos to help himself to the beer. The Highlander's constant complaining about how quickly Methos depleted his stores had become something of a game between them. Mac was entirely too calm tonight, too polite, playing the role of the gracious host with practiced ease. Methos' back and neck screamed with tension as he waited for the other shoe to drop.

At last the empty bowls were cleared away, and the two men lounged at opposite ends of the soft leather couch. Methos watched as Duncan swirled his wine glass. Once, twice, three times and a sip. The glass turned and turned, the red wine gleaming darkly, like blood. Mac sipped again.

"I ran into Seireadan today."

Methos' hand went numb around the slippery sides of the beer bottle, and he nearly dropped it. His heart hammered so loudly in his ears that he felt like his head would burst. "What did he have to say?" The words were were forced around the stiff tongue and suddenly dry mouth by an effort of will alone. He didn't bother asking if the druid was dead. Mac's tone of voice eliminated that possibility from the start.

Mac shrugged and continued to spin the wine glass. "Lots of things, none of them very flattering." The dark eyes captured Methos' hazel ones with earnest intensity. "Methos, he said..." Mac took a breath before continuing.

"He said there were some things I should ask you about if I didn't believe him."

"And?"

"And what?"

"And did you believe him?" Methos' voice was cold and flat, distant-sounding in his own ears. The tiny ember of hope that he, like a fool, had dared to nurture sputtered and died.

"I'm asking you, aren't I?" Frustration colored Mac's words, lending them a slight edge.

Methos sat his beer down with exaggerated care, and spoke very calmly. "I can't keep doing this, Mac. I cannot continue to have this same argument with you night after night."

"I don't want to fight about this, Methos, but I need to know. I need to hear it from you."

"Why? So you can look down on me one more time from the smug comfort of the moral high ground? So you can get your precious Highland sense of honor offended and condemn me for my past? You want to cast me out _again_ for things I did over 1000 years before you were born?"

Methos stood, chuckling weakly, humorlessly. "I can't keep doing this. Gods, Mac, don't you understand that there is nothing you can say to me, nothing you can think about me, no dread imprecation you can lay on my name that I haven't beaten you to? What, you think I'm _proud_ of the things I've done, the horrors I've been party to?" The smooth baritone voice cracked, and Methos drew a deep, shuddering breath to try and compose himself. This was easier than he'd imagined it to be, now that he had abandoned the false hope of saving the friendship.

"Yeah, Mac, I was good at what I did; the killing came easily to me. And gods help me, I liked it. I liked the sense of power that it gave me. But don't you think for an instant that I don't carry the weight of that evil with me every day, that I don't see it every time I look in a mirror.

"I have quite enough to deal with, thank you, without you trying to heap on more." Methos stopped his explosive ranting, out of words, out of breath, out of anger.

Mac's expression was unreadable. He set the empty wine glass aside.

"What do you want from me, Methos? Absolution? Forgiveness? I can't give it to you! You tell me that I'm too quick to judge, too ready to believe what other people tell me about you, so I'm asking _you_ to tell me, and you're still angry?" Mac was very still, a sharp contrast to the other man's uneasy shifting. "You want me to accept your past? Fine, but I can't do that until I know about it, until you tell me."

Methos stopped his restive stalking and stared at Duncan blankly.

"Methos, this isn't easy for either of us, but I'm doing my best here. I can't accept what you've done until you do, first. Why don't you try a little of your own advice for a change?"

The old Immortal was stunned. He had had his words turned against him before, but never quite like this. "I..." he replied cleverly.

Methos folded his long frame back down against the creaking leather upholstery, reaching mentally for some cynical, distancing barb to toss between them, a smart-ass remark or acid observation with which he could shield himself, and found nothing. MacLeod had left him suddenly defenseless, and feeling very exposed.

"You're right."

"That's a first. I never thought I'd actually hear you say that," Mac chuckled.

"Well, there's a first time for everything, I suppose. I never thought I'd have to say it."

Mac was suddenly serious. "So can we do this? Can we talk about this without breaking any bones tonight? Will you tell me?"

"You should stop asking questions that you don't really want the answers to, Mac. You don't want to hear this story, believe me." This was simpler when he believed their friendship was dead. How many times did he have to kill it, how many times did he have to hand Mac the knife so the Highlander could cut out his heart and hand it back to him?

"No," Mac agreed, "but I think I need to hear it."

Methos took a breath and drained off the last of his beer. How many times could this fragile bond of friendship be destroyed? He focused on the rich detail of the table's finish, letting the sweep of the dark wood-grain fill his vision. He couldn't meet Duncan's eyes and still be able to do this.

"Her name was Meara, but I didn't know that until four years after she died..."

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

 

* * *

_Ireland, 410 AD_

_Methos trudged across the low, rolling hillocks on legs that literally trembled from weariness. Hunger, now a constant companion, had settled into a burning, leaden pressure in his gut, and he cursed himself again for his carelessness. He had spent too much time in Rome, and his speech and bearing were marked as a result._

_Ireland was not a good place to be for a Roman, as Methos had belatedly discovered. His scant personal resources were quickly exhausted and he had been hugely unsuccessful in attaching himself to any of the numerous small courts, or in hiring himself out as a mercenary in one of the ever-present tribal conflicts. Romans were universally mistrusted, and as a consequence, Methos was homeless, destitute, cold and hungry._

_And more than a little insane. Only three weeks earlier, caught in a long stretch of open country between villages and unable to snare any small game or birds in the open grassland, he had been so desperate, so weak from hunger that he had tried to eat grass. Lucidity had returned to find him rolling miserably in the dirt, folded double around the crippling stomach cramps, his face smeared with green froth. The next day he managed to catch a young hare, and ate it raw._

_He had even once madly considered selling his sword, the Roman gladius he had salvaged from the Rhine massacre years before. The short blade was the one valuable thing he still owned, precious to him in many ways, but it would have been enough to garner him passage on a ship to Britain or Gaul. A brushing encounter with the humming Presence of another Immortal was enough banish that thought. Methos would survive. He had been in more desperate circumstances before, surely._

_Still, it rankled that he had been reduced to stealing, looting isolated homes and farms, but such was the price of his carelessness. The Roman army had largely provided for his needs, and before that... Well, entire villages had fallen at his whim in that nightmare orgy of violence he had endured with Kronos. It had been like waking from a dream, a night terror he had shuddered off and run from like nothing he had run from before or since._

_That other Methos had waded in blood and death, in savage acts of selfishness and cruelty. And this cold, hungry vagabond had killed him, discarding that dark past like a shed skin. And leaving it behind._

_Wind tugged at the dark clouds, and a cold, misting rain began to fall, soaking his hair and the inadequate rags he wore. The stinging wind-driven drops biting into his face were like the final insult. Exhaustion and misery were eclipsed by disgusted anger as he slogged through the wet grass and sticky mud, cursing this entire island, the climate, the populace, the convoluted language, and most of all his own blind stupidity and overdeveloped sense of irony that had trapped him here in this most-uncivilized corner of the world._

_There, just over the next rise was a stone farmhouse, far from the sheltering cluster of the village proper. With luck, they would let him shelter for the night, and without luck, well... it wouldn't be too difficult to simply take what he needed. Methos regretted the necessity of theft, but survival was a little higher than pride on his list of priorities. His stomach rolled in anticipation at the thought of a hot meal._

_The central building was tidy and well-maintained, like the outlying fields and low stone fences. Methos ducked through the single door and looked around the dark, smoky interior. Nobody home. He took an automatic inventory of items that could be bartered or sold as he moved directly to the the simmering pot hanging over the hearth._

_Methos collapsed to his knees, gratefully snatching the stew pot from its hook and wolfing down large handfuls of the thick, hot stuff, not caring that he burned his hands and mouth, only caring that the food was fresh and filling, and warm. Gods... no emperor's feasting table had ever been better. He sucked another greedy mouthful off his fingers._

_"THIEF!!" The word was a thunderous roar behind him._

_Startled, Methos jerked back, lurching to his feet, his sudden motion upturning the pot. For the barest instant his attention was split between the large man advancing on him and the equally distracting sight of his almost-dinner flowing out onto the dirt floor. Confusion and grief swirled for a moment, mingling with his helpless frustration before focusing into a diamond point of rage._

_Rage Methos turned against the man storming toward him._

_Methos didn't even bother to draw his sword. The farm's would-be defender was not unskilled with with the long dagger he wielded, but he was no match for the long experience and tremendous desperation of the Immortal who had come to rob him. The pathetically uneven contest was over too soon._

_Methos' memories of that rainy afternoon would be forever fragmented and unclear, viewed through the double distortion of time and killing fury. There would never be any recollection of how he disarmed and felled the large man, but the look of unbelieving fear in the brawny farmer's wide blue eyes as Methos squatted over his chest, raising the impromptu weapon of the iron stew pot, the breathless excitement as he hefted the dense bulk of it, the weightless rush of acceleration as he swung it down... These impressions would be forever embossed in his mind. Methos grinned at the choked, little-girl squeal issuing incongruously from the big man on the floor as the pot connected, bouncing off the hard head with a ripe, splitting _crack_._

_It wasn't enough. Methos' overwhelming wrath demanded more. He swung the pot in a terrible, deadly rhythm, grunting and cursing, peripherally aware of the muted bell-like ringing as the iron pot glanced off the dead man's skull._

_It still wasn't enough. Methos' arm burned with the effort of pounding this miserable, smelly farmer's head into a shapeless sack. And. It. Still. Wasn't. Enough._

"NO!! Father!!"

_Something pulled at his arm and he whirled, lashing out against the solid shape that had materialized beside him, sending it flying with a grunt and a clatter of broken crockery. Methos stood, dropping the bloody pot with a soft clang and stalked toward the young woman who lay dazed, sprawled on the packed dirt._

_He gripped her roughly by her shaggy blonde hair, knocking her head back against the floor as his free hand ripped at her skirts. The fear in her blue eyes was sweet, almost enough..._

_Methos levered her white thighs open with cruel fingers and a strong knee, lifting his tunic to drive himself brutally into her as she struggled and bucked. He punctuated his rough thrusts with sharp, backhanded blows across her face. He watched her fear mingle with pain as bruises rose in her fair cheeks, her soft lips splitting under his blows, scattering droplets of blood in a fine mist across her skin. The fear in her eyes had been sweet, but her screams were sweeter._

_He pounded against her, wanting only to hurt, to humiliate... to obliterate. He needed her pain and fear as much as he needed to wipe it from her, to utterly erase the terror in her wide eyes._

_It was a long time before she stopped screaming._

* * *

Methos had been right: Duncan _didn't _want to hear this horrible story confirmed, to see the terrible truth of it in his friend's eyes. The tension in the room was so heavy, so thick that Mac felt immobilized by it. He had insisted on hearing this, despite Methos' warning, despite having already heard a version of it from Seireadan. But he hadn't wanted to believe. Mac had hoped, vainly, that Methos would lie to him, deny the truth of the offensive druid's words. He should have known better.

"I remember looking down at her afterwards. She was so young; I learned later she was only sixteen..." Methos spoke softly, still staring intently at the coffee table. "There was so much blood everywhere. I was still kneeling there when the villagers arrived. I imagine it was her screams that summoned them." There was a pause.

"I didn't even resist them as they took me away."

Duncan was a confused tangle of conflicting emotions. He didn't know what to say, what to do. He desperately wanted to be able to lash out at something, to transform the swirling, helpless anger into physical action, to make it right by an application of force or temper. He wasn't angry specifically at Methos, and this in itself was surprising to MacLeod. Rather he was possessed of a directionless, frustrated rage that could find no easy target.

Duncan's head ached from the twin burdens he labored under: the dreadful violence of the crime, and the equally fearsome anguish in his friend's voice as he recounted the grim madness-filled episode from his past, painful ground that Methos walked again only at MacLeod's urging. Duncan fought against the need for physical action, realizing that any such display would surely be misinterpreted.

It would be too simple to let Methos bear the focus of his anger, and Mac refused to let his friend become the target of opportunity.

Duncan took a deep breath, setting aside his own churning emotions with great effort, and tried to think of the friend across from him, clearly suffering with this memory. Methos would stare a hole in the tabletop if he wasn't careful, so intensely focused was his gaze. Mac shifted against the leather cushions, absolutely unable to remain still for a moment more.

"I don't know about you, but I need a drink. Can I get you one?" Duncan stood and walked as casually as he could manage to get glasses and whisky. He didn't bother with frivolities such as ice or coffee. This was definitely a night to drink the liquor straight.

He almost smiled. Two bottles in as many nights. If they kept up this way, he and Methos might have to join one of those 12-step groups.

Methos still hadn't replied by the time Mac returned with the short tumblers and tall bottle. The old Immortal was staring at Duncan suspiciously, like Mac had suddenly turned green or sprouted antennae. //No,// Duncan thought with a sharp internal wrenching, //he's looking at me like he expects me to start shouting. And I suppose he has a right to.// Mac poured for them both, and pressed a glass into Methos' hands. Both of them had trembling hands.

"Was that when you were given to Seireadan?" He asked the question as gently as he could.

Methos tossed back the whisky with one gulp. Duncan refilled it for him as he spoke. "Yes. Seeing as how I... Because Meara had no other family, the elders gave me to her betrothed. Imagine my surprise to find out he was pre-Immortal."

"There's something I still don't understand. Why didn't he just kill you?" Mac shoved away the image of the terrified girl, dying in a pool of her own blood, Methos' long, aristocratic fingers tangled in her hair, wrenching her head back... Duncan swallowed a mouthful of burning liquor, trying to rinse away the angry violence still rising in him. If he could focus on Methos, he could get through this. He couldn't let it be about the girl, she was beyond his ability to help or avenge. No, this had to be about his friend and the insulting, irritating Seireadan who wanted to kill him.

"Oh, that's the best part, when you _know_ the gods are watching you." Methos took another large swallow of his drink. "He was forbidden to kill me. Anything else was fair, as long as I didn't die from it."

Mac was silent, waiting for Methos to continue.

"One of the village elders had a peculiar sense of justice. I had killed, taken the girl's life, and her father's, so I had to pay for those lives with my own. Not with my death, understand, but with my _life_. And Seireadan took the price of that crime out of me every day for seventeen years." Methos drained the glass again and exhaled sharply.

Mac's head swam. "Seventeen years?" The thought alone made him sick, dizzy with the implications of that kind of torture for that long a time. How could even an Immortal endure that level of abuse?

Methos nodded. "I didn't realize how long it had been until near the end when I started counting the seasons. I wasn't entirely sane anymore. There are still gaps in my memory from back then." He shivered lightly, turning the glass in his hands.

"How did you escape him?" Mac asked lowly, subdued by the task of trying to fathom Methos' experience. He couldn't wrap his mind around the idea of that much torture, and wasn't sure he wanted to.

"I told you Seireadan was a pre-Immortal, hadn't had his first death yet?"

Mac nodded.

Methos' grin was savage. "I took care of that for him. I behaved myself for a couple of years, and he got careless. He gave me an opportunity, and I took it. One sunny afternoon while his back was turned, I took a log of firewood and pounded his head flat. Then I ran, and kept running." There was a faraway look in the hazel eyes as he remembered. "I only wish I'd have had the time, or a sharp enough object to finish the job, but even a feeble Quickening would have attracted more attention than I wanted just then."

Mac was silent as Methos chuckled darkly. "It took him years to find me after that. The villagers, rightfully thinking he was dead, buried him."

"God..." Mac shuddered at the abrupt memory of being buried, smothered in black earth, trapped, suffocating again and again.

"Seireadan thought I was cursed, because I healed so quickly, thought my punishment was decreed by the gods. He believed that his own Immortality was given by the gods so he could continue the torture. For all I know he still thinks he's doing his religious duty in hunting me."

"No, he wants to kill you." Mac forced his mind to latch onto that singular point. That had to be the only issue here, that Seireadan wanted Methos dead, and Mac wasn't prepared to let that happen. All else was incidental. It had to be.

"Well, that's something. I was beginning to think he was a real one-trick pony." Methos was silent as Duncan refilled the tumbler again. The hazel eyes were less than sober as they focused on him. "Mac, I'd rather die than be under his power again. I can't do it, I _won't._"

"You won't have to." The words were a promise.

Methos shook his head wearily. "You can't..."

"...fight your battles for you. I know." Mac smiled and sipped at his own drink. "But just this once, can I hold your coat for you?"

* * *

It was very late, and they were very drunk, having drained the first bottle of whisky and part of a second one. They put back the liquor at a frightening pace as their constitutions restored sobriety at an unfortunate rate. It was difficult for an Immortal to really tie one on, but not impossible, so they had risen to the challenge by mute agreement. Neither of them particularly wanted to be sober tonight.

Methos wasn't sure anymore what they were supposed to be talking about, but he was glad to be here. There was comfort, however illusory, in the old forms and rituals of their friendship. He and Mac would be arguing again tomorrow, or in a week, or month, but tonight... Tonight was sweet.

Methos still wasn't sure what had happened, and truthfully, he wasn't inclined to examine it too closely. The evening was winding down on a good note, especially given that he had long since expected to be on the wrong end of Duncan's katana.

The two friends were sharing a quiet moment in between bursts of conversation and increasingly rude, funny stories, most of which seemed to feature Amanda. Methos envied her the long history with MacLeod. What he had said to Joe earlier was true: he didn't have many friends, and Duncan MacLeod was precious to him on many levels. He didn't want to lose Mac, and Methos determined to cheerfully remove Seireadan's head with his teeth, if that was what it took, to prevent just such an occurrence.

"Methos?"

He jumped at the question, yanked out of his reverie. Methos was drunk, too drunk to stay here. All of his defenses were crumbled, and he needed time and distance to rebuild them.

"I need to go," he said simply, and staggered unsteadily to his feet.

"Why don't you stay? Neither of us are in any condition to be out." Mac turned on the charm with his best version (albeit his best drunk version) of the puppy-dog look that Methos could never resist. "Please stay? You can even have the bed again if you want."

"All right, you win!" Methos chuckled at Duncan's determination. "But the sofa will be fine." He didn't mention that he never slept well on Duncan's bed, for a variety of reasons.

Mac looked at him a little strangely, then staggered off to gather pillows and blankets.

* * *

_The loft echoed eerily, emptily, like a vacant house as Methos stepped cautiously across the wooden floors. Shadows shifted and flowed around him, obscuring the edges of the room. The skin on the back of his neck began to creep at the unnatural stillness of the place, the heavy mass of unmoving air that pressed against his ears._

_"Mac?" The word was swallowed by the utter silence, leaving no trace of itself behind. Methos' heart began to pound; he was afraid. He didn't want to be here, this dark imitation of what had once been a haven to him, as much a home to him as any he had ever had._

_Methos wanted to run, to get away, to flee this cold, silent den and whatever secrets were concealed along the shadow-lined walls. Where was the lift, the door, the window? Panic swelled inside him, making his chest tight, his breathing harsh. He had to get away. Where was the door?_

_Something tugged on his arm, a sharp scrabble of long fingers and Methos lashed out with a wild backhand blow, connecting solidly. He turned blindly on the dim shape of his attacker, raining down panicked punches, his own breath whistling in unsteady gasps of fright. He continued beating on the form mercilessly until it stopped struggling, only then daring to move back for a better look._

_//No...// Shaggy blonde hair fanned out over the wood floor of the loft. Her clothes were torn, bloody scraps of fabric, her once-beautiful face a broken, bruised mask. Blue eyes stared at him sightlessly, the pupils hugely dilated. Blood spread out in a dark, sticky pool under her hips._

_Methos began to tremble as he knelt beside her, still-warm blood soaking the knees of his jeans. He reached to smooth the disheveled skirts, trying to cover her shattered, exposed body, to hide the bruised thighs and return her some of the dignity he had stripped away with her brutal murder._

_She was so young, only sixteen... He pulled her limp shape to his chest, moaning softly, rocking her like the child she was. Methos pressed a gentle kiss to her cooling forehead, tasting the blood..._

_...Gráinne spasmed in his arms as he rocked her, tears streaming down his face. //No... //_

_Methos pressed his hand to the vicious tear in her side, feeling the wound pulse in time to her heart, slowing down. No... she had to live, she _must_ live. He choked back his sobs as she smiled weakly at him, touching his face with the last of her strength. Her dark eyes were dull and glazed, the lids growing heavy as she leaked out her life between his fingers..._

_"Miotas..."_

_//No. No... Nononono... // His chest tightened until he thought he might implode. He couldn't breathe, couldn't cry out... There was no voice for his despair. He shifted, pulling the limp, dark-haired form against him..._

_...Methos shifted MacLeod's slack weight across his knees, pulling the Highlander against his chest as he continued to rock, keening like a wounded animal. Duncan's clothes were little more than shreds, his blood seeping out in a dark pool on the floor. Methos pressed vainly against the terrible wound in Mac's side... This was wrong... No..._

_Mac looked up at him with confused, pain-filled eyes, blood bubbling on his beautiful lips as he whispered._

_"Methos..."_

_One word, and the life faded from the shadowed eyes. Duncan's head lolled back..._

_...and toppled off, rolling with a grotesque, uneven thumping across the floorboards._

_The scream ripped from Methos' throat with astounding violence._

* * *

Duncan opened his eyes in the darkness, wondering what had wakened him. He was about to turn back in to his pillow when he heard it again: a soft, irregular gasping and a low whisper of foreign syllables, too fast for Mac to identify.

"Methos?" Duncan slid out of bed and padded cautiously over to the foot of the sofa. Methos was dreaming, twitching in his sleep as the strange words poured over his lips. Duncan watched for a moment, unsure whether to wake the old Immortal or to let the dream run its course. Methos called out again, and the uneven breathing descended into rough sobs, tears seeping from under the tightly compressed eyelids.

No dream then, but another nightmare. Duncan's heart twisted to hear the harsh breathing swell into a soft keening, a mournful wail broken only by a single word Methos called over and over in his sleep: "Duncan..."

Mac shook himself. What was he doing, watching this? Bad enough that he had conjured this darkness with his relentless questions, he wouldn't stand here now like a voyeur and eavesdrop on Methos' dreams. He sat gently on the edge of a cushion. This had gone on long enough.

"Methos?" he called quietly. "Methos..." One hand stretched out to nudge the old Immortal awake.

At Duncan's touch, Methos screamed with astonishing power, a raw sound of unspeakable loss and fear. The lean body jerked upright in one convulsive motion, hazel eyes wide and panicked, open without really seeing. Cold hands flew at Mac's face, and he flinched, not knowing whether to anticipate a caress, a blow, or anything in between. The long fingers were quick and firm, exploring the column of Duncan's neck with steady pressure before dipping to pull up the tail of his t-shirt and spread, trembling, across the span of his ribs.

Methos pushed at the firm sides, searching Duncan's face with haunted eyes, still lost in the terrible dream he had not yet fully wakened from. Duncan allowed the unexpected intimacy, more from surprise than any conscious decision, and wondered what Methos was looking for in his body.

"Methos?" Mac caught the slender wrists before the hands could wander further.

"D-Duncan?" Mac could see full awareness dawning, the night terror draining away only to be replaced by a new kind of dread. Methos' body tensed, and the familiar defensive look rose on the sharp face. "Duncan, I'm sorry..."

"Don't apologize, please. There's nothing to be sorry about." Duncan kept his gentle hold on the cold wrists, idly stroking them in an attempt to soothe the old Immortal.

"No, I didn't realize... I never meant to..." Methos was clearly agitated.

"Shh. I said it was all right. You were dreaming about me?"

The light was dim, but Mac could clearly see the embarrassment flow across the mobile face. "I was talking in my sleep?"

"Shouting is more like it." Duncan paused. "Will you tell me about it? Please?"

Methos shook his head sharply in negation, an uncontrollable shudder coursing through him as he turned away. "No..."

Duncan's concern transformed to alarm. He moved his grip to Methos' shoulders, turning the old Immortal back to face him. "Methos, was it me? Did you dream that I hurt you?"

"Oh, gods, no... You..." Methos paused, his lean chest still struggling for breath in an uneven rhythm. "Duncan, you were dead... and it was..." the bright hazel eyes squeezed shut, "it was my fault..."

Duncan kneaded the hard shoulders reassuringly. Despite the unfathomable difference in their ages, something about Methos always aroused Mac's protective instincts. He wanted to hold him, soothe away the fear and hurt like he would a child. He had done that once before, held the familiar shape of Methos to his chest, rocking him, trying to gentle the wrenching sobs in the horrible aftermath of the double Quickening they had shared. Even now, the memory sent a sharp pang of sympathetic pain through him. For those few moments they had been so close, more than brothers, until wounded feelings and stubborn pride had conspired to separate them again. Now it seemed the circle had come round once more, bringing them together. It was so easy now to offer the physical comfort of contact, the warmth of a human touch. "It was just a dream. It's all right."

Methos shivered again. "No, don't." He pushed the soothing hands back to Duncan's side. "Please... don't do that right now."

* * *

Methos' head swam from more than just the late hour and after-effects of the nightmare. Did Duncan understand what he was doing? Did he realize how difficult it was for Methos to refuse that warm contact, the offer of friendship and maybe more? He looked at Duncan, perched there on the edge of the couch, another shadow in the dark room. If Methos relaxed his guard just a little, he could... No. Mac had no idea what signals he was sending out, and even if he did, this was comfort, not the passion Methos had hoped to see in MacLeod's eyes.

"Go back to bed, Mac." His voice was rough with frustration and disappointment.

Duncan hesitated. "I'm sorry that I caused any of this tonight."

"_What_?"

"The dreams," Mac clarified. "What did you think I meant?"

"It's nothing. Go to bed, Mac." Methos turned away again, not willing to let Duncan see his face. He didn't trust himself tonight.

"No, it's not 'nothing,' I can see that much." Methos could hear the stubbornness rising in Duncan's voice. Gods help him, Mac was in full protective mode, and he wasn't going to let this go easily.

"Duncan, if there is any kindness for me in your heart, you will not pursue this tonight." //Please, Duncan,// Methos pleaded silently, //please just go to bed...// He could feel himself starting to shiver in reaction to the lingering nightmare and Duncan's nearness. Duncan was so warm, so alive. Methos fought the urge to touch him and confirm that vital heat.

A burning hand closed over his shoulder, turning him back toward the center of this conflict. That single contact, the solid touch against his shaking shoulder would be his undoing. Methos wasn't strong enough tonight to walk away from whatever Duncan was offering.

"Methos, if that's what you really want, I'll go back to bed."

"No..." He felt like a tumbling stack of dominoes, no longer steady enough to support himself. His trembling became convulsive quaking as the incredible heat of that solitary touch seared through him.

"Hey, hey... It's all right. Methos, it'll be all right." Mac pulled him around with more force, drawing him into a comforting embrace.

At least, that was the intention.

Methos threw himself into Mac's arms with a desperation that surprised them both, burying his face in Duncan's neck, breathing the subtle scent of Mac's soap and shampoo. He clung to Duncan like a lifeline, craving the feel of the Highlander's heart against his own. Methos knew the chance he was taking here, realized that if he allowed this to continue that morning would likely find the tenuous friendship utterly destroyed.

And at this moment, he didn't care.

Methos pulled back a little from the desperate embrace, and trailed easy fingers over the strong contours of Duncan's face, learning by touch. Methos moved so slowly, not wanting to frighten Duncan, wanting to give the Highlander plenty of time to resist or respond on his own. A thumb traced a feathery caress over the sensual mouth in a mute question. There was confusion and curiosity in Duncan's dark eyes, but there was also an answer.

The kiss seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

Methos cupped Duncan's face, guiding the kiss, the softest brushing of lips as they breathed against each other. He wanted this so badly, but he needed Duncan to want it too.

"Duncan, I..." He murmured against Mac's lips.

"Shh." MacLeod pulled him back into the kiss, and hope spiked, along with desire. The unsubtle tangle of lips and tongues deepened quickly, too quickly. Methos savored the faint taste of whisky on Mac's tongue, forcing himself to go cautiously, to deny the rawness of his loneliness and need, the deep yearning to feel Duncan's skin against his own. He had wanted this for so long, to touch, to share this physical intimacy, and now presented with the chance for it, Methos was afraid. Afraid that Mac would stop him, and equally terrified that he wouldn't.

He let his hands wander down, exploring the muscular span of Mac's shoulders, caressing the neck, the blessedly whole neck. Trembling hands were steadied by the simple expedient of pressing them to Duncan's chest, firmly stroking the sturdy ribs and narrow waist in an unconscious echo of the earlier frenzy to escape his nightmare.

Both men hesitated as Methos skimmed the waistband of Duncan's sweats, the languid touch a tease, a promise, and another question. Response or refusal, Methos waited for the Highlander's answer as he toyed nervously with the tail of the old t-shirt Duncan had been sleeping in, slipping his fingers beneath it to sample the richness of the warm skin there.

MacLeod at last pulled away, releasing Methos from the shelter of his arms. Cold air swirled between them, and Methos fought to control his breathing, choking back the threatening sob even as he cursed himself bitterly. He would _not_ cry; he refused to further humiliate himself with such an unmanly display at Duncan's rejection. Clenching his eyes shut to bottle up the dangerous pressure behind them, he could feel the shift of cushions as Duncan stood, doubtless preparing some moralistic denouncement, to be followed by a physical eviction from the loft. Methos had known the risk he was taking, but that didn't ease the pain of his failure.

He tried to salvage some of his shredded pride. "I'm sorry, Mac, this shouldn't have happened. I-I'll be going now..."

"What are you talking about?" Duncan's voice was confused, but not filled with the censure Methos had expected. He chanced a look, and saw Mac smoothly stripping off the dark t-shirt, revealing the shadowed expanse of his chest. Duncan reached for him, and Methos followed with stunned steps as he was led across the room to the large bed. "This is the only place you're going, unless you really prefer that freezing couch."

Duncan drew him down between the blankets, snuggling close for warmth. Strong fingers continued stroking him with soothing, not-quite erotic motions as Duncan continued speaking. "Methos, I admit I never expected this... but..." he paused, eyebrows knitting as he searched for words. "Please don't go."

Now the tears threatened to overwhelm him. "Duncan, I..." he faltered. There was no way to say it, to express how deeply this touched him. "I've wanted this for so long..."

There was still a need for caution. Methos had longed for this moment too many months to surrender to his urgency now, and Duncan, for all his bold willingness, was inexperienced in the ways of pleasure between men. The progression, the gradual increase in the intensity of the exploration, was agonizingly unhurried. Methos could have driven the encounter, asserted control and dominated the give and take of pleasure, and he could have made sure Duncan loved it. He could have called on his long experience to leave the Highlander a gasping heap of spent flesh and exhausted synapses, but Methos had left those days behind him with his other cruelties. He didn't want a conquest; Methos wanted a partner.

So instead he guided. Slowly, gently, a touch here, a whispered encouragement there, another article of clothing eased off of long limbs with painful deliberation until they were both nude between the rich sheets. Both trembling with desire, aching with the need to be touched.

Duncan moved over him in the darkness, kissing, caressing, groaning lowly at the heated glide of excited flesh as their bodies pressed together. Methos loved this, the warm sheltering breadth of Duncan's weight pressing him down... pushing against him. His hips bucked up to meet his partner's, their erections tangling together in an unbearably erotic dance. And for a few moments, it was enough.

Methos panted, breathless with desire. "Duncan, please? Will you?"

"Shh. Yes, just a moment." Mac nodded his understanding and lifted his weight from the smaller man, rolling aside.

Methos heard him rummaging in a drawer for the necessary lubricant. The anticipation alone of sharing that fierce union with Duncan was almost too much for the old Immortal. He gritted his teeth against the sharp spike of arousal that swept through him at the thought, stubbornly determining to wait, and have it all. He stalled for time to control his excitement; if Duncan touched him now, he would surely explode.

Mac turned back toward him, and Methos took the small plastic bottle from his hand. He turned his attention to MacLeod's body, plucking and teasing, kissing and sampling, stoking the fire of Duncan's arousal even higher. He needed Mac to enjoy this as much as he did, and in a way, he might have needed Duncan's pleasure more. Methos touched Duncan's face in a tender caress, pulling the younger man to him for a kiss as he pressed the bottle of lubricant back into the dark hand.

Methos slid away, rolling to lean his shoulders on Duncan's chest, waiting. "Please..."

Duncan breathed onto his neck, and Methos sobbed with relief as he felt the strong hand smoothing the cool gel into him, the fingers carefully stretching the tense passage. The light brush of Duncan's erection behind him was an unbearable tease. "Gods, Duncan... Yes, please, now..."

"Yes..." One firm hand on his hip to steady them, and Duncan began to press the union.

It felt like forever, the slow delicious sensation of being filled, with Duncan's warm shape behind him, holding him. It was a dream, a fantasy come true. Methos felt his eyes fill at the absolute ecstasy of it, thinking that it could not possibly be any better. And then Duncan moved.

The pleasure was irresistible. Methos could no more stop it than he could stand against the wind and command it to be still. Movement was everything. It consumed him, became him, he would cheerfully have died rather than cease that blissful rocking. And then there was more. An arm came over him and pulled him closer into the protective, pleasuring union, the warm hand trailing over his belly to grip his aching erection.

"Oh, gods, Duncan..." The firm, sure touch of that hand again changed everything. Methos was filled and surrounded, enfolded by heat and pleasure. It was all he could do to breathe, drawing in Duncan's scent, losing himself in the silken texture of his friend's skin moving along his back. The sensation trailed up his spine, filling his chest with a convulsive sob of pleasure that waited to be torn from his throat.

Methos cried out a wordless exclamation as his orgasm overtook him, pressing himself back into Duncan's embrace. Moments later he could feel Mac stiffen along his back, thrusting with deep, steady motions as he, too, surrendered to the release.

* * *

They drifted off to sleep that way, twined in each other's embrace, Duncan still trailing gentle kisses along Methos' neck and shoulders. For the first night in a long while, Methos' sleep was mercifully devoid of dreams.

* * *

Duncan shifted languidly against the warm sheets, savoring the delicious drowsy floating that only happened before waking. This was one of his favorite times, not quite awake yet, but neither fully asleep, when dreams were still real and the day ahead only a pleasant possibility. Mmm... he sighed slowly, registering the pleasant pressure of the body tucked comfortably against him, their long limbs embracing under the covers. He stroked his cheek against the warm head nestled under his chin, whuffing gently into the soft hair, breathing the lingering traces of soap and...

...aftershave?

Full wakefulness intruded rudely on the moment as the awareness of last night's events rushed back, and Duncan's mind raced as he considered the implications of what had happened. What would happen now? What should happen? Where would this lead them to... or what if it didn't take them anyplace? Was Mac ready for either possibility? How would Methos react to their intimacy in the sober light of morning? Duncan squinted at the pale light streaming through the windows. What time was it, anyway?

MacLeod couldn't see a clock from his present vantage, and was still unwilling to move and risk waking his partner. The gray, wintry light from the windows gave him no clear indication of the hour. Methos rumbled contentedly in his chest and snuggled closer against Duncan, nuzzling into the Highlander's chest. Duncan wished he could see Methos' face just then, to perhaps gain some additional clue about how his friend... his _lover_ might react.

And how did Duncan feel? That was the more difficult question, but one that begged an answer, hopefully one he could resolve before Methos woke. MacLeod was not ashamed of what they had done, but the absence of shame wasn't enough. They had both still been a little vulnerable in those dark moments on the sofa, but they had been sober, the intoxication long since burned away by their Immortal metabolisms. Besides, at no point in the evening had Mac been so inebriated that he didn't know what he was doing. He had told Methos the truth last night: he hadn't expected this, but Methos' fingers against his face, that subtle, shy kiss... Well, it had changed things for them both. Duncan had wanted that touch, had needed to feel Methos against him more than he ever would have imagined possible.

Duncan MacLeod had his own answers, or at least a beginning to them. This was far more than an absence of shame, more than need, even more than offering physical comfort to a treasured friend. Even now, the feeling of Methos sleeping in his in his arms filled something in him that he hadn't known was empty.

Methos stirred against him again, and Mac's chest tightened, wondering what would happen when he woke. There were rules for when you accidentally fell into bed with a woman, there were protocols to follow, rituals you observed. Duncan had no precedents to call on here. What were the rules between men? He didn't want this to destroy their friendship, but could they return to sharing beer and Methos' abominable taste in movies without having this subtext running through every invitation to dinner? Or would Methos follow the simple expedient of disappearing? Was this unexpected turn in the relationship something Mac wanted to pursue; was it something he could afford to ignore?

His tangled thoughts were interrupted by Methos' waking. The old Immortal stretched and sighed, moving back a bit to shift sensually against the sheets. Mac watched him, fascinated by the responses the movements stirred in him, the graceful motions reminiscent of other, less innocent activity.

"Good morning," Duncan said simply, still looking for cues on how to proceed.

Methos looked at him for a long moment, the sharp face mysterious and unreadable. "Good morning, Duncan."

The reply was perhaps a bit formal, considering their location and state of undress. Mac's confidence wasn't inspired. Methos was obviously playing the waiting game too. The hazel eyes flicked over Duncan's face, and Mac suddenly felt like an open book, like Methos knew every paranoid, uncertain thought in his head.

Methos smiled softly at him, a hint of sadness in his eyes. "Penny for your thoughts?"

//I could do this,// Mac thought as sudden fear shot through him, //I could brush this off, blame it on the whisky, or on curiosity. I could claim to have just been swept up in the moment, and he would let me.// And for a heart-pounding instant Duncan thought of doing just that, of taking the easy exit that Methos was offering, but he remembered, too, the crushing hurt in the ancient's voice when he thought Duncan had rejected him, and remembered his words. 'I have wanted this for so long.' //He is going to lay here and let me break his heart.//

Duncan couldn't do it. He was prepared for the consequence if he was wrong, if he had misread Methos about this, but he, himself, would not be the one to inflict the wound. Instead he smiled, studying his partner's face, and gently touched the vulnerable nape of Methos' neck. "I was thinking about how beautiful you are, and what a fool I was not to have seen it before."

* * *

Methos was caught off-balance. Duncan seemed to be doing that to him a lot lately, but this time the sensation was not entirely unpleasant. This hadn't been the wake-up Methos expected to receive, and he was in no way complaining. Tiny hairs prickled along his neck at the soft tickle of Mac's fingers at his hairline. Methos relaxed against the arm that cradled him, accepting this rare moment for all it offered.

"Beautiful is not a word often used to describe me." The words were self-depreciating, but the wistful tone softened their harshness.

"Then I will have to say it more often, because it's true. You are a wonder to behold." The gentle tease on Methos' neck became a slow caress, and he looked up to see Duncan's eyes darken with desire. Here at last was the passion he had hoped for, the fire that lay smoldering beneath MacLeod's surface, where Methos had long hoped to warm himself. He reached for Duncan, tangling long fingers in the warm silk of Mac's hair as they drew together. Seeking lips meshed with a deep groan and a rasp of stubble as tongues and teeth caught at each other, exploring at leisure this morning what might have been overlooked last night.

Their hands clasped together in a wordless sharing of strength. Methos took that mingled fortitude, that leashed power, and reversed it, easing Duncan back on the bed until the Highlander looked up trustingly into the hazel eyes. Methos moved over Duncan, leaning in for more sensual kisses, savoring the slow throb of Duncan's heart beneath his own. There was so much warmth in that golden, exquisite body, so much pleasure in the touch of that sweet mouth on his own. With a sudden pang Methos recalled the moist heat of those lips on his body, the soft kisses trailing across his throat like Greek Fire. He groaned against Duncan's mouth as the memory spiked through him, leaving aching arousal in its wake. Methos felt like he could die content, if only he might know the touch of these lips in his last moment.

It was a breathless minute, dizzy and dreamlike, suspended in time and sheltered from the world as they lay pressed chest-to-chest, heart-to-heart, hands and mouths embracing in the cool light.

With a hollow, rumbling gurgle, Methos' stomach growled loudly, Duncan's following in close sequence, like a canyon echo, and the realities of mundane existence intruded rudely on the absolute poetry of the previous moment. Both men paused in surprise at the interruption, humor dancing in Duncan's dark eyes, and their stomachs groaned again, an elongated sound that Methos thought sounded oddly like recordings of whalesong. It was too much.

Methos rolled off of Duncan and tossed an arm over his face, laughing helplessly. Soon enough he heard Mac succumb to laughter, chuckling beside him in bed. It was a minute or so before Methos caught his breath.

"Oh, gods..." he wheezed. "Breakfast?"

Duncan nodded, glancing over Methos at the bedside clock. "More like lunch. It's after 1:00."

"Really?" Methos didn't actually sound surprised. "Lunch then. Eat in or go out?"

Mac feigned contemplation. "Oh, I think we can manage to feed ourselves here, that is, unless you really _want_ to go out..."

Methos' heart began to pound at the smoky look in Duncan's eyes. "No, here is fine."

"I was hoping you'd say that. Let me see what I've got..."

Methos caught his breath at the absolute perfection of Duncan's body. He had seen Duncan nude before, in casual glimpses that fueled his private fantasies for months at a time, but never like this. Never before had he viewed that glorious form with a full knowledge of the textures, the tastes, the scented hollows hidden in the taut skin. He had never been able to rightfully view Duncan's body with the appreciative admiration of a lover.

Too soon the view was concealed as Mac pulled on a dark robe, pulling another out of a wardrobe to toss to Methos. //Oh, well.//

He followed Mac to the kitchen and perused the refrigerator's contents, searching for ideas. "Tell you what, Mac. You go have the first shower and I'll look after breakfast."

"You're going to cook?" MacLeod was dubious.

"Stop that. Yes, I'm going to cook. I haven't lived on cheeseburgers for 5000 years, you know. And you fix dinner often enough." Methos shooed Mac off to the bathroom. "Go. I can to do this without a babysitter. I'll try not to break anything, I won't burn myself, and I promise not to run with knives, all right? Go!"

Duncan laughed and headed for the shower.

* * *

Methos was in an uncharacteristically good mood, but then this was an uncommon day. Oh, there were still things to discuss, issues to resolve, but with luck they had passed the worst of it with that startling development last night. And Methos refused to examine any serious topic too closely today.

He hummed softly to himself as he measured ingredients and stirred together a rich batter, then spooned it into a small-cupped muffin pan he found on a low shelf. The oven preheated as he thought. //Eggs? No, fruit.// Coffee and juice were prepared, and he continued humming the same ancient melody as pieces of whole fruit were sliced and cleaned. He very literally could not recall ever being this happy.

The phone rang. Methos set aside his board of nectarines and reached for the handset. "MacLeod's."

His good humor evaporated, and an angry, frustrated heat rose to his face as the caller spoke, his soft voice improbably beautiful, impossibly hated. "Well, Ceallach, this is a surprise. I was going to have your little Scottish lapdog deliver a message for me, but here you go and save me the trouble. Just as well, servants can be so unreliable."

Methos ignored the insults, they would be settled soon enough. "What do you want, Seireadan?" There was no use in asking how he got the number. Even unlisted telephone numbers were ridiculously easy to get when you knew how.

"Want? What I _want_ you can't give me. But I'll settle for your head. Let's finish this, Ceallach. I'm weary of chasing you, my runaway Roman." He named a time and place.

"It's broad daylight, Seireadan. Do you really want a crowd?"

"It'll be private enough for us. And don't make me have to remind you to come, we both know how that turned out last time."

Methos gritted his teeth, determined not to rise to the bait. Soon enough all the old accounts between them would be settled. "I'll be there."

He glanced at the clock as the handset was replaced on the cradle. Two hours to wait. Finishing breakfast was a joyless chore.

* * *

Warm smells of coffee and nutmeg filled the loft, greeting Duncan as he emerged from the steamy bathroom. A happy tingle of anticipation glowed in him as he thought about spending the day here in lazy isolation with Methos, snugged in securely under warm blankets, listening to the wind and brewing storm. He tightened the belt on his robe and went to go offer Methos the bathroom.

He was a little surprised to find Methos seated on the couch. From what Mac could see from behind, the old Immortal was fully dressed, the set of his shoulders radiating tension. Duncan paused, a little confused by the sudden change in the signals Methos was sending out. Did Duncan miss something?

"There's coffee and juice, and fruit on the counter. Muffins will be about fifteen more minutes." Methos didn't look up from the task his hands were busy with. His tone was cool and businesslike, with none of the earlier warmth and humor. Something was very wrong.

"Thanks." Mac went to pour himself some coffee, wondering what the problem might be. Was it something he had done? If so, he could not pinpoint his oversight. No, this was new. He turned, determined not to let this fester into another sore spot.

"Methos, what--" he stopped mid-sentence. Methos was hunched over on the leather sofa, sharpening his sword with practiced motions, testing the edge for flaws with his thumb.

This was no misunderstanding. There was a deadly intent in Methos' posture as he stroked the polishing stones along an imperfection in the blade's razor edge. Duncan abandoned his coffee on the kitchen island and went to sit in the chair opposite from the sofa. "If this is how it's going to be, I'll cook breakfast next time."

Methos grunted. "Your breakfasts are fine, but if you ever try to make me drink another cup of that unholy brew you concocted for Christmas, it _will_ come to swords."

"The wassail?" Mac's sense of dread was growing. The words of the banter were familiar, but the tone and pacing were off, leaving the exchange flat and meaningless.

Methos shook his head, still gazing intently at the shiny blade. "Mac, I've had wassail, and that wasn't it." He tested the corrected spot along his blade, hissing as his thumb came away with a deep cut. He sucked on the bloody pad before looking up, hazel eyes devoid of humor.

Duncan fought down the surge of protectiveness that swelled in him. "Is it Seireadan?"

Methos nodded tersely. "He called. I'm going to meet him and get this over with."

Duncan echoed the nod, a slow kind of fear building in his chest. //Why today, why _now_?// What kind of a cruel fate would take Methos away from him now, with the possibilities of their new discovery so lightly sampled?

"Does it have to be today?" Duncan realized the uselessness of the question even as it fell from his lips.

Methos nodded again. "This reckoning is past due already, Mac, and he is the one insisting on the timing of it. If I don't go today, then his requests will just become increasingly ...impolite." There was a bitterness to the words that went beyond the obvious statement.

"What do you mean, 'impolite'? I've seen what passes for civil in this man, and don't think I'd care to see him on less than his best behavior."

Methos glanced at the clock. "Go rescue the muffins. You deserve to hear the rest of the story before I go."

Duncan walked into the kitchen, a chill creeping across his neck at what Methos didn't say. He wanted to tell the story now in case he didn't come back.

The sound of Methos' voice followed Mac into the kitchen. "It was about, oh, twenty years or so after I'd escaped from Seireadan. I was still in Ireland, married and settled," Methos paused for a second before continuing, the rich voice tinged with a faint sadness, "well, as settled as Gráinne and I ever got. Christianity was still a very new idea on the island, and not a popular one, but I'd been spending some time studying with local priests. I met a man there, the local Bishop, who had the most unusual thoughts about slavery. He hated it, and that was a notion I was ready to listen to. The locals called him Padraig."

"You knew St. Patrick?" Mac was surprised.

"Yeah, he was one of the few truly good people I've ever met." Methos began to pack away his sword-cleaning supplies. "Anyway, staying in Ireland probably wasn't the wisest decision I ever made. It was only a matter of time before Seireadan found me."

* * *

_Ireland, c. 446 AD_

_The months had passed quickly since Amalgaid of Hy-Amhalgaidh had sent his druid, Rechrad, in the narrowly-failed attempt on Padraig's life. Rechrad and his eight companions had been swiftly dealt with by Methos and Gráinne, discovered by chance as the white-robed assassins crept across the yard toward the main building of the monastic settlement. An overturned earthenware jar had given them away, waking the two warriors who still slept with soldiers' reflexes._

_Still, it had been too near a thing for Methos' liking, Rechrad nearly succeeding in the murder of the elderly Padraig. Methos had grown fond of the earthy, practical, spiritual man, and with the priest's help had rediscovered a peace he had lost, or perhaps had never owned._

_Methos was happy here, watching the seasons turn with mindless determination from one to another. He fed his hunger for scholarly pursuits with the monks, and his need for the physical with Gráinne. And if the Brothers disapproved of his swordwork, or his pagan Irish wife, well, they kept their own counsel about it._

_He stood in the doorway of the small house the priests had provided for him and Gráinne, staring out past the fence toward the hills, at the tiny wildflowers peeking out of the tall grass. They had been here for over a year now, since before the assassination attempt. Methos had enjoyed his time here with the monks, and had taken rare pleasure in the long hours of study and the exhaustion of honest labor. It was fulfilling in a way he hadn't anticipated to build things, to nurture gardens, to help the settlement thrive._

_He knew though that Gráinne was bored and restless, had seen the signs of her bone-deep unhappiness in her increasingly short temper and ever-longer expeditions into the surrounding hills. She was a creature of physical action. She craved the wind in her face and a sword in her hand the way some men lusted after strong wine. The same way Methos yearned for the almost-forgotten feel of a page, a scroll, or a book in his hands._

_He sighed, looking up at the scattered, slate-gray clouds as though for guidance. The breeze tasted like rain again today. Perhaps it was time to move on, and trust that there would be an opportunity for scholarly pursuits later. After all, he had the luxury of time that Gráinne did not._

_Glancing back over his shoulder, he looked at her, sitting on a narrow stool in the center of the room struggling to knot a new rug. He almost laughed to watch her, still having such obvious difficulty with womanly tasks. They had argued often over his adamant refusal to purchase a slave to look after the domestic chores, especially now that they were wealthy enough to afford one. Even after she had discovered his Immortality, Methos had never told her about the long nightmare he had endured as Seireadan's slave. He was glad that she had never gone against his wishes in this one thing. Gods help him, Methos would never again own a slave._

_Gráinne snarled and tossed away the half-knotted tangle of yarn with a curse. "How can you be so damnably still, Ceallach?" she growled irritatedly. "I cannot spend my days like this, in these woman's chores while you contemplate meaning in scratches on a parchment. I need the sun on my back, and new hills under my feet. I will go mad in this place."_

_"I said I would teach you to read. There is still time to learn," he offered for the hundredth time._

_She spat on the dirt floor. "It's unnatural. Knowledge should be sung, should be told around the cook-fire, not made into soulless marks on a page. Besides, you think too much as it is, tiarna. Who would hunt the hare if we were both like you, always bent over some new scroll, making your eyes weak with reading? No, Ceallach, you think enough for us both."_

_He smiled and stepped up behind her, kneading her strong shoulders. "Patience, we will not be here much longer. Soon the ground will be dry enough for travel, and we will go." He glanced at the uneven snarl of her unfinished rug and continued. "You know, you never had to learn rug-making if you didn't want to. The Brothers would have understood."_

_She made a face and leaned back into the massage. He noticed the way her tunic tightened across the swell of her breasts. "They understand nothing, but there are only so many times in a day that a sword may be cleaned, and the meadows are unpleasant to wander when the rain is too heavy."_

_She tipped her head back to look at him seriously. "Ceallach, I am tired of making rugs."_

_Methos leaned down to cup her breasts, testing their soft weight, teasing her already-tight nipples through the coarse fabric. "Yes," he breathed in her ear, "I know."_

_Gráinne reached behind to grip the backs of his thighs, pulling him tightly against her. He took the invitation and bent further to capture her upturned mouth in a rough kiss, pushing the hard ridge of his erection into her back in an unsubtle tease. She bit at his lips, digging her fingers into his legs. Even after so many years, the sex between them had never softened, never lost its rough, slightly violent edge._

_After a moment she turned on the stool, reaching for his belts. Methos noticed the new threads of silver in her wild black hair with a tiny pang of sadness. It was always painful to see them aging._

_He didn't get to linger in his melancholy for very long._

_//Oh, yes...// She knew what he liked. One hand plucked lazily at the knot in his top belt while the other stroked him firmly through the rough cloth. His knees nearly buckled as she leaned in to breathe warmly through the fabric._

_"Is this what you want, Ceallach?" she teased._

_"Yes, yes..." He could already anticipate the moist heat of her mouth._

_Gráinne was laughing low in her throat, nipping at the material covering his belly and hips, lifting his tunic with agonizing slowness when he felt it: the too-familiar wash of Presence in his ears._

_Arousal vanished, replaced by a cold lump of anticipation in his gut and the thready pulse of adrenalin in his veins. Methos stiffened and pulled away from her, tugging down his tunic with a firm motion. "Stay here," he commanded brusquely, snatching up his sword on his way outside. //She never does listen,// he mused as she followed him out, her own blade in hand._

_Small hairs at the back of his neck prickled as he scanned the yard for the Immortal he sensed. A tall, red-haired man turned slowly, surprise and recognition lighting his features._

_Seireadan smiled, a predatory gleam of white teeth. "Well, look what we have here. The gods are kind today, to deliver you back to me, Ceallach."_

_Methos' grip tightened on the hilt of his sword, and he stared coldly at the hated figure across from him. "Funny, I was just thinking the same thing. This is a lucky day."_

_Something was wrong here, if Methos could just put his finger on it. There was some important detail he had missed, and his mind raced to discover it. It came to him in a sudden rush of understanding._

_"You didn't come here for me," he declared firmly. "What do you want here, Seireadan?"_

_The white, easy grin never faded, but the tall druid's body radiated tension. Methos had hit a nerve. "No, you are something of a surprise, Rómhánach," he drawled conversationally. "The gods were very angry at your defiance of their will, your attempt to escape the punishment they decreed." He gestured at himself with a sweeping motion. "You see? They would not permit you to kill me. They raised me up to be an instrument of their will, so that I might destroy you for them."_

_Seireadan chuckled and glanced around the compound. "I really should have thought to look for you here, in these places, sooner. A sniveling Roman dog running back to the sanctuary of the stoneless priests of your bloodless, sacrificed god. You are all alike."_

_The baleful emerald gaze settled on Gráinne. "And you, daughter? Would you be like him, throw your lot in with his and add apostasy to your betrayals?"_

_Methos could almost feel the heat radiating off of her as she shifted beside him, bristling at the many levels of insult the druid was dealing out. He gave a restraining grip to her shoulder and stepped forward. "Is this how you prove your strength, how you display your divine favor? You come here to bait women and kill beardless boys and old men? Rechrad couldn't kill Padraig, and he came at night with eight helpers. What makes you so bold to come alone at mid-day?"_

_Seireadan started, clearly surprised. "Yes," he hissed, "I came to kill the priest. Rechrad was an incompetent; he could not have succeeded if he brought twenty with him. Some things need to be seen to personally." He smiled poisonously. "Rather like the discipline of a runaway slave. Wouldn't you agree?"_

_"I am not so easily taken back. If you want to hurt the priest, you'll have to go through me to do it." Methos' knuckles were white on his sword, the fine wires of the hilt digging into his palm._

_"Very well, Ceallach." Seireadan produced a short sword from a scabbard across his back. "I will kill you if I must."_

_"You can always try," Methos replied evenly._

_There was a bustle of activity off to the side as brown-robed monks came boiling out of the doors to the main building. Padraig was at the lead, his wispy white hair fluttering about his head like vaporous thoughts drifting from his skull. His voice was entirely too big to be contained in such a frail-seeming body._

_"You will not do this here!" He thundered. "You will not water my garden again with blood, I will not have it." Padraig's sharp eyes narrowed, studying Seireadan briefly._

_"Get you gone from here, druid, and do not come back with such violence in your heart. I will go to my God soon enough without any help from your blade."_

_Seireadan glanced quickly about, his eyes lingering on Padraig, and on the two well-armed warriors facing him. He scowled tightly at Methos. "Another day then, Ceallach. The gods are patient, and it appears we both have time to wait." He spared a hard, hate-filled look for Padraig and the assembled monks before turning to leave with a flourish of pale robes._

_Methos trembled with the need to pursue him. He turned, ready to yield to the desire and go after Seireadan and finish this, and saw Padraig watching him with serious, gentle eyes._

_"Let him go, Ceallach, don't let him unravel the peace you've found. There's been no harm done here."_

_Methos sighed, letting the cold fury drain out of him with some difficulty._

_Padraig continued, watching Methos with perceptive eyes. "I see," he nodded, motioning Methos to follow him as he walked, "you are angry, yes?"_

_"Yes."_

_"You want to kill him, this druid?"_

_"Yes."_

_"If you pursued him now, how long would you give chase? How long are you willing to hunt him to see that done, this killing?"_

_"As long as it takes. He needs killing, Padraig. Some men do."_

_The old priest nodded, his white hair floating like smoke around his ears. "There is much you don't tell me, Ceallach, but I have eyes. You have been a slave before." It was not a question. "Be still, I am not asking for the details. I was a slave once, and can guess at many things you might not wish to speak of. But whatever the means, you are a free man now."_

_They walked along the wooden fence in silence for some time before Padraig turned to him again. "Are you willing to give up that freedom, yours and your wife's, to satisfy the demands of your temper? Will you now be a slave to your own anger?"_

_Methos let the conversation drop. Like Seireadan said, they both had time to wait._

_It was only a week later that Gráinne went out hunting and never came back._

_There was finally a break in the weather, a brief sunny period in the long series of spring storms that lashed the island, and Gráinne was chafing to get outside and roam. Methos had asked her not to, in fact had forbidden her to leave, but he knew she would disobey. He never really worried for her on these expeditions, since she was a more than capable fighter, and often came near to besting him in their sparring matches. So that morning, he cheerfully commanded her to stay at home and went off for his customary talks with the Brothers._

_Methos didn't start to worry until after the noon meal. By mid-afternoon, tired of restlessly pacing the fence, he went out after her. He searched the hills, hoping desperately that he was mistaken, that she was fine, or had merely twisted an ankle. A simple reason, a harmless oversight. She was fine. She must be._

_Just before sundown, he found her. The grass around her bore mute witness to the violence of her struggle. The earth was gouged and uneven, the grass trampled and bloody. It was hard to look at her lying there, pale and blood-smeared, her strong body broken and bruised, tossed down on a hillside like a discarded doll._

_Methos knelt beside her in the grass and gathered her into his arms, smoothing back the hair from her battered face. He could summon no emotions for her, could draw no grief from the great emptiness inside him._

_She coughed as he pulled her to him, bloody saliva bubbling on her lips. "Gráinne?" He was so surprised that he almost dropped her, but managed to pull her closer to his chest, pressing a hand to the savage tear in her side that pulsed in time to her fading heart. //No...//_

_"Gráinne..." he whispered her name over and over, rocking her, willing her to live. Methos pressed his head to hers as if he could infuse her with life by proximity alone, as if he could use his body as a shield against death. The pulse against his fingers continued to diminish, Gráinne's eyes dulled as she struggled for breath._

_The last of her strength was spent as she raised a cold hand to touch his face, and whispered what she had called his "faerie name."_

_"Miotas..." The light in her eyes faded and died._

_He slept next to her there on the hillside, in the rain, and the next morning buried her in the meadow below. He was hard-pressed to recall ever feeling so alone._

_Methos returned to the monastery only to collect his things. He spent the next ten years hunting Seireadan, but never found him._

* * *

The sky was a black and battered mass of rumbling thunderheads, the promised storm at last crashing down on the city like a hammer. The rain sheeted down in a fine, icy spray, slicking the sidewalks and obscuring visibility in the already-gloomy streets.

Methos was careful to arrive early to the rendezvous, wanting the illusory one-upmanship of making Seireadan seem late. Water cascaded off the low overhang where Methos waited, and he pressed closer to the wall in a fruitless effort to stay dry as long as possible, shoving his hands deeper in the warm pockets of his coat. This was a miserable day for a duel: dark, wet, and freezing cold, but he had fought under worse conditions.

Seireadan's choice of location was puzzling. A claustrophobic maze of small warehouses and narrow alleys near to one of Seacouver's shopping districts, the area reminded Methos of an old-style hedge-maze from a castle garden. //Well,// he thought, looking at the corrugated metal walls and broken-down pallets everywhere, //maybe if Victor Frankenstein had had a hedge-maze. Hard to believe this place is spitting distance from a busy shopping mall.// He had always hated labyrinths, even when they were in fashion. It was too easy to become confused, to get turned around, panic, and lose your head in more than just the figurative sense.

The wait was the worst part of any conflict. He hated the nervous anticipation of knowing the fight was coming, of stretching his senses for the warning tingle of an approaching Immortal. Better to just get the challenge over with; fight your best fight and face the consequences.

Methos' thoughts were interrupted by the tingling pressure in his ears that announced Seireadan's arrival like a faithful herald. Methos stripped off his warm gloves, unwilling to trust his grip to the slick leather, and limbered his broadsword. He noted with detachment how quickly his fingers chilled on the hilt. Best to end this fight soon, before they stiffened and grew numb in the bitterly cold rain.

Seireadan spoke first, his smooth voice offensive with false cheer. "So glad you could make it, Ceallach." He was a pale ghost in the shadowy street, the beige coat reminiscent of the robes he had worn so long ago. Methos refused to be distracted by the parallels his mind stubbornly drew. He had escaped Seireadan after seventeen years of starvation and torture. Methos would not be so easy to defeat now.

Methos adjusted his grip and gathered his resolve around him like a cloak. "Oh, I wouldn't miss this." He glanced around significantly. "Lovely spot you picked to die in, and such beautiful weather. You should have left me alone, Seireadan. You might have kept your head a while longer."

"No, _Rómhánach_, I still owe you for so many things, and I'm not one to leave such a great debt unpaid."

Methos raised his sword and beckoned with his free hand. "Well, come on then, because I'm ready to collect." His grin was savage as he baited his opponent. "If I had a rock handy, I'd pound your miserable head flat again, just for old times' sake."

Seireadan answered with his sword.

The alley sang with the sound of steel on steel as they traded blows, each testing the other's strength and skill. Methos was faster, but Seireadan was slightly taller and had a better reach; he was able to put more power behind his strikes. There was nothing polite or civilized in the way they exchanged these brief, testing passes. The thinly leashed fury that drove them, the bone-deep hatred fueling the conflict moved this well beyond any gentlemen's duel or ritual combat. This appeared to be exactly what it was, a savage, no-holds-barred combat to the death.

* * *

It was a nervous game of cat-and-mouse around the dirty gray warehouses. Seireadan obviously knew the area well, and he used that knowledge to his own advantage. Methos' world narrowed to the tight focus of sight and sound, the strain of trying to pinpoint Seireadan's location by following the hum of his Presence alone.

The cold rain ran over his face and down the back of his neck-- another distraction to ignore. There was only the low thrum of Presence in his ears and the possibility of ambush around every corner as Methos stalked through the maze of dirty buildings. The rain hissed and popped like a broken radio, drumming on the metal roofs and obscuring all other sound.

Methos took a breath and stepped from behind the shelter of another wall. He barely saw the faint glimmer of the sword arcing toward his neck in time to duck.

There was no time for conscious thought, only the faith and trust in reflexes that had seen him through so many challenges before. Seireadan followed the sword, appearing around the corner in a swirl of pale coat tails, and the fight was rejoined in earnest.

* * *

Methos was breathing hard, blinking away the blood and water that ran into his eyes as Seireadan advanced again. The druid was good, better than Methos had expected. Much better. The fight had gone on too long. Methos' ungloved fingers were stiff with cold, numb from the ringing impacts of the heavy blows he had deflected. He had been pressed back, and further back, until he climbed a jumble of crates to the dubious sanctuary of a low rooftop, gambling for the time to find an avenue of escape or attack.

Methos was losing.

Seireadan stepped carefully across the small roof, grinning in anticipation. Methos' only consolation was that Seireadan looked every bit as exhausted and cold as he felt. If he had to lose his head today, by the gods, the price would be as dear as he could make it. He beckoned Seireadan forward again. "Come on," Methos taunted between breaths, "what are you waiting for?"

His arm felt heavy and boneless as he swung up his sword to meet the flurry of blows. Methos noted with dull satisfaction the shallow cut he had earlier scored across the other man's torso, the scratch on his cheek. Seireadan was slowing down. But so was Methos.

Something tugged on his shoulder, and his hand spasmed open with a numb jerk. Methos heard his sword fall with a muted clang. Only then did he feel the pain of the crippling gash, his shoulder cut to the bone where his guard had dropped. Adrenalin blunted the agony, making his heart pound from more than exertion as cold chemical energy seared through his body. Two inches higher and it would have been his head.

Seireadan laughed. "Well, it looks like you are finally out of places to run to, Ceallach. I've waited for this a long time."

Strangely, Methos had no fear, only an irritated disgust that was partly aimed at his opponent, but mostly at himself. This was _not_ how he had imagined the confrontation going, but he was not out of resources yet. He retreated across the tiny roof, regretfully abandoning his sword. "Sorry to disappoint, but you're going to have to wait a little longer."

He leapt from the rooftop before Seireadan could do more than utter a cry of protest at the loss of his prize.

* * *

Methos knew he was taking a gamble, but even the dicey sanctuary of a crowd was better than certain death on a dirty rooftop. It was farther than he expected, down an alley, over a cyclone fence, and a mad dash across a main road to one of Seacouver's shopping malls.

He wiped at the blood on his face and hands as he ran, cleaning himself the best he could with the rainwater. There was no way to disguise the tears in his clothes, or the slowly-healing gash in his right shoulder. Methos could only hope that people were too preoccupied with the pre-Valentine's rush to notice one much-abused Immortal.

* * *

Duncan congratulated himself on his patience and strength of will for waiting a full fifteen minutes before caving in to the need to follow Methos to this challenge. Mac didn't make promises lightly, and his offer to hold Methos' coat, to act as his second, was sincerely meant.

Well, in all honesty, only the first ten of those impossibly long minutes could be accounted to his resolve to be patient and wait like others had waited for him so many times before. Mac's restraint exhausted, the last five minutes were spent weighing his need to be there, to be a strong shoulder for Methos to lean on afterward, or if necessary to avenge the eldest Immortal who had become so illogically important to him. He balanced the urgency to _go_ against the certainty of Methos' irritation at being followed.

Duncan felt like he could deal with any argument, any conflict with Methos as long as the cynical old man were still around to fight with him. //This is about my friend,// Mac repeated to himself, refusing to consider any incidental details. //This is about being there for Methos.// Seireadan's vengeance, however justified, would just have to wait. Duncan had the more immediate claim on Methos.

The reasons not to be doing this were numerous and convincing, and Duncan recited them all as he drove through the pouring rain.

* * *

Methos' only comfort was that the mall was too crowded for open combat. He threaded his way through the dense afternoon crowd almost unnoticed, only stopped by two good Samaritans who asked concernedly about his condition. Yes, thank you, he was very much all right, yes, he was certain he didn't need a doctor, or lunch, or a place to stay. Then a quick duck and twist thought the fluid mass of people, and he was away, moving again. Motion was the key to his survival.

The low hum of Seireadan's Presence had faded as Methos had crossed the highway, but he had no illusions about the mad druid's determination to have his head. Seireadan would be after him momentarily, crowd or no. He renewed his movement through the throng of people, his mind racing. Maybe there was time to find an exit and get a taxi to the dojo, or to Joe's, or to a convenient church. Methos was not above seeking holy ground when other avenues of escape were limited.

And the other avenues had apparently just been cut off as he felt the sweeping surge of Presence in his ears. Too much of a coincidence to hope that it might be some other Immortal shopper just out for a weekend spending spree. Methos caught a glimpse of coppery hair and a pale coat weaving toward him thought the press of holiday shoppers.

He wasn't going to be able to lose Seireadan here. The crowd had outlived its usefulness as camouflage, and Methos made his way to a staircase, up and across to a roof access. He checked the weight of the long dagger still secreted in the small of his back, wishing vainly that the needle sharp weapon were weighted for throwing. Pity he hadn't taken his pistol to Mac's last night, it would have come in handy today.

Methos' shoulder was almost completely healed by the time he emerged on the rainy rooftop. What pain and stiffness remained was simple enough to ignore as he drew the long dagger and waited for Seireadan to follow him. The crowd below had not sheltered him. All that remained was to find some bit of privacy for the duel and to fight his best fight, even under-armed as he was. The dagger was a faithful weapon, having saved his neck on more occasions than Methos cared to recall offhand, but he knew it was no match alone against the longsword that Seireadan wielded with such skill and power.

The roof access creaked open with a protesting squeal. "Well, Ceallach. Still running like a Roman dog, I see." Seireadan glanced around. "Seems you have at last run out of escapes."

Methos swallowed heavily and tightened cold fingers on the hilt of his inadequate dagger. There were too many things he wished he could have told Mac, but he firmly pushed aside that thought. Regrets would do him no good now. He channeled all of his determination and will to live up into his eyes, meeting Seireadan's gaze coldly. "I'm not done yet."

"Yes, well, we'll see about that. Unless you are planning on another diving lesson?"

"No." Methos blinked rainwater out of his eyes and opened his stance defensively. The dagger would give him an advantage in speed and control. He hoped it would be enough against Seireadan's reach and strength.

The first blow jarred his arm all the way to his still-tender shoulder, making Methos grit his teeth and retreat a half step back, trying to absorb the force. This wasn't going well at all.

Slowly, Seireadan drove him back, beating unsubtly at Methos' defense, pushing him back into a walled section of the roof where Methos would be unable to jump. There was a kind of dreamy pleasure on the druid's face that was out of sync with the sheer brutality of his attack.

* * *

Duncan had rolled down the car windows with a reckless disregard for the consequences of water on his leather seats. He strained his senses for the tingle of Presence, or for the flutter of long coats around the corners of buildings. But it was the brief spark of steel on steel on a high rooftop that captured his attention. //What on earth are they doing at the mall?//

He would never completely recall how he came to be there, struggling upstream in the press of shoppers like a salmon, desperate to reach the roof. That the challenge had gone on this long, that it had come here of all places, didn't bode well. Methos was a more than capable combatant, but he was also more than a touch paranoid in his need for privacy. He would not have willingly moved this duel to such a public location without dire circumstance as a motivator.

Mac's feet found the stairs, carrying him up two and three steps at a time. He quietly blessed Amanda, and all the miserable hours she had insisted he spend with her here. At least he knew his way around.

He flung himself through the roof access door into a wall of icy rain and the powerful wash of Presence. The solid weight of his katana was in hand without conscious thought of drawing the elegant blade.

"Well, Rómhánach, looks like your lapdog has slipped his leash again. Maybe I'll see to his better education once we are finished here." Seireadan raised his voice for Mac's benefit.

The tall druid stepped back a bit, and then Duncan could see Methos, looking very pale and small in his black coat, clutching a bloodied dagger in his right hand. Where was his sword?

The rich baritone had a raw, tired edge to it. "Oh, I don't know that you'll be in much of a condition to do _anything_ when this is over."

"Now, Ceallach, you know the rules. Single combat. Your Scottish shadow there can't interfere."

Mac listened to the exchange, watching the exhausted resignation in Methos' sharp face give way to a tight determination. He knew that face, had seen the feelings flowing across the expressive features like water. Duncan knew, too, the man behind those deep eyes, at least as well as anyone ever knew the elusive Methos. He knew some few of the horrors Methos had been party to, and had seen some of the tremendous gentleness the old Immortal was capable of.

His grip on the carved hilt of the katana was painfully tight, the weight of the sword dragging on his arm. Duncan felt curiously light headed, as if that single burden pulled on him in ways he hadn't expected. The slender length of ivory and steel was indescribably precious to him, a tangible symbol of his life, his existence, as much a part of him as his Immortality. As much a part of him as Methos was.

There was no conscious decision to be made. Mac cried out a single word, unsure later whether it was a warning, a name, or something else, but it served it's purpose regardless. Methos' head swung up at the exclamation, the long arm snapping out to catch the katana as it sailed toward him.

Duncan counted the remaining blows of the challenge, watched the elegant set-up that ended Seireadan's life. Six. Six blows in two passes before the auburn-haired head came away from the shoulders, rolling aside with a grotesque thumping as blood fountained across the tan fabric of his coat. Rain hissed in a steady downpour, filling the sudden silence.

Methos looked up at Mac with a kind of panic as the Quickening struck. Dimly, Duncan could hear the sounds of breaking glass in the mall below.

* * *

It was long moments before Methos stopped screaming under the pain/pleasure of the Quickening. Mac winced in sympathy. It was difficult to watch the intimate fury of a Quickening assault anyone, no matter who, but Methos seemed to have more difficulty with it than most Immortals Mac had known. He let the spasms pass, giving the old Immortal time to recover on his own before moving closer to offer help as Methos lurched to his feet, shaky as a new colt.

Methos looked up at him, his face still haggard from the force of the Quickening. It was a rare, unguarded moment. Pain, anger and other emotions flashed across the hazel eyes too quickly for Mac to keep up with them, and behind that... Duncan could only call it a hardness, a vision of that unyielding steel core that let Methos endure the millennia. There was the briefest glimpse only, and then it was shuttered away, camouflaged, concealed, making Mac wonder if he had truly seen it at all.

When Methos looked at him again, it was as himself, all the surface Mac was accustomed to seeing in the sharp face, and none of the shadowed depths. Duncan wasn't sure what he saw there, but the old Immortal was clearly wrestling with something, the thin lips working soundlessly for an instant before Methos found his voice, harsh and gravelly from his exhaustion. "Duncan, I..." He blinked once, slowly. "Thank you," he said at last, simply, holding out the katana for Mac to take.

Mac tucked the sword into his coat, noting the traces of blood on Methos' hands. He thought hard for them both, and clasped that stained hand to help his friend rise. There were no incidentals to consider, no peripheral issues to cloud this reunion today.

Something warm and satisfying filled Mac's chest as he swung a supporting arm around Methos' slender shoulders. "Hey, what are friends for?" He wiped at the rain that trickled into his eyes, making them sting treacherously. "Come on, let's go find your sword and go home."

Methos sighed and leaned into the embrace. "That sounds like a wonderful idea."

* * *

Finis

* * *

Historical notes:

The massacre of the Roman garrison on the Rhine in 406 is true. Three years later a barbarian army, led by Alaric the Goth, sacked Rome, carrying off tremendous wealth in gold, silver, and freed slaves. The sack of Rome, and the resulting fall of the Roman Empire is considered the historical beginning of the Middle Ages.

Ireland, or Hibernia as it was called then, was never conquered by the Romans, or any other invading force until the Viking invasions of the 700s. Some scholars have speculated that it was the pacifying Christian influence that made the Irish vulnerable to conquest. Others hold the view that conquest was inevitable in any case.

There is no way to include complete biographical detail on St. Patrick here. The assassination attempt made against him by the nine druids is factual, as are the names of those involved in it, but the date of the attack was not recorded, nor were any other details.

Druids were the religious and intellectual class of the Celtic peoples, and were as diverse and individual as any other caste. Seireadan is not meant to be typical of the druids.

* * *


End file.
